Stealing LeBron's Head

Submission 20,216

Part of a series on LeBron James. [View Related Entries]

About

Stealing LeBron's Head refers to a trend originating on TikTok in July 2021 where people steal the heads off LeBron James Space Jam 2: A New Legacy action figures from retail stores such as Walmart. In August 2021, TikTokers then began using a different Lebron Space Jam doll, filling it with water and other liquids, to create humorous clips on the platform in a related trend.

Origin

On July 14th, 2021, TikToker @calanmcgowan posted a video saying they stole the head off a LeBron James action figure while a remixed version of the Space Jam theme played (shown below). The video gained over 731,000 likes (shown below).

Spread

Over the following weeks, multiple other TikTok videos appeared in which people bragged about stealing the heads off LeBron James action figures. On July 15th, user @jacobhndrxx posted such a video, gaining over 124,000 likes (shown below, left). On July 21st, user @dominicmec posted a video showing multiple stolen heads, gaining over 220,000 likes (shown below, right).

The missing LeBron heads were soon noticed by Twitter users who were baffled by the sight. On July 25th, 2021, Twitter user @HeadZonkStudios^[1] posted their discovery, gaining over 800 retweets and 5,200 likes (shown below, left). The same day, user @paynus3^[2] posted a picture of LeBron figures with missing heads and a picture of a LeBron selling on MerCari for $85, suggesting people were attempting to sell the stolen heads. The tweet gained over 5,800 retweets and 51,000 likes (shown below, right).

Filling Lebron Doll with Water

In August 2021, TikTokers took the trend a step further, using a different stretchy and goo-filled^[3] Lebron James Space Jam doll and filled it with water and other liquids like milk.

TikToker^[4] @take.ls.or.give.ls uploaded the first video of this on August 13th, 2021 (shown below, left), where he filled one of the stretchy Lebron dolls with water in a bathroom sink, slapping it and splashing it around. The video received roughly 5.5 million views and 860,000 likes over roughly five days. Although it doesn't use the same Space Jam audio from the head-stealing videos, other TikToks inspired by it did. One such example was posted by TikToker^[5] @emersonocole on August 16th, 2021 (shown below, right). This TikTok received roughly 7.6 million views and 1.1 million likes over roughly two days.