A typical Dobbshead
A Dobbshead is an image of the head of J. R. "Bob" Dobbs with his characteristic grin and his pipe full of frop. Typically Dobbsheads are all derived from the same image, a piece of 1950s clip-art that "Bob" posed for, during his career as a male model and actor who did cameo acting gigs in many movies of that period as well as instructional films and documentaries. The original image is a halftone image that uses amplitude modulation to form a collection of regularly spaced round dots of varying sizes, and is in black and white, although there are colorized variants of the Dobbshead that have appeared in more recent decades. It is said that by looking at an original black-and-white Dobbshead and seeing the dots, anyone with Yeti ancestry, even if they have never heard of the Church of the SubGenius, suddenly has all of their subconscious, inherited memories of their Yeti ancestors activated, and immediately remembers everything and fully understands all SubGenius principles. Once someone is activated by seeing a true, original Dobbshead in black and white with the dots, they become a mindless slave to "Bob", doing his every whim without question. Broadcasting an original Dobbshead in the mass media or posting one at a busy street corner in a large city is a surefire way to activate very large numbers of latent SubGenii, creating an army of millions of followers of "Bob". The Church of the SubGenius has several other symbols besides the Dobbshead, for instance the Dobbs Ikon is often used as well.
Legal Schism
Unfettered use of the Dobbshead periodically fuels a minor schism in the Church of the SubGenius. According to legend, the original Dobbshead was discovered by Dr. Philo Drummond while working for AT&T, scanned at high resolution and redistributed. The defenders of the Sacred Trademark assert that The SubGenius Foundation, Inc. is fully within its rights to assert that people must have the Church's permission to use the Dobbshead. Rev. Ivan Stang states that this permission is part of payment to become ordained ministers in the Church. The majority of active SubGenii are in this camp.
Others claim Stang only holds this view since he is CEO of the SubGenius Foundation and the one who stands to gain from having Dobbsheads trademarked. They assert that since the original Dobbshead appeared in a catalog of public domain clipart produced by AT&T and this catalog was full of images that anybody could freely use for any purpose (mainly intended for companies that advertised in the Yellow Pages of phone books) that it is in the public domain regardless of use.
Legally speaking, the Dobbshead is a registered trademark of The SubGenius Foundation, Inc. and has been for decades. The anti-trademark side has failed to provide evidence that it was ever public domain clipart, and the copyright and registered trademark were both approved by the U.S. Government.
Here is a video showing various things happening to a color Dobbshead:
Here is an ASCII Dobbshead from the days of yore:
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