How about a thumb pin like this?  

Pretty tough?   Not really!  Start with your basic cylinder with about 172 by 100 divisions:

Now a little masking using Ctrl-drag:

Invert  (ctrl-tap outside the model) and inflate (Deformation subpallet):

Now for some stripes.   On the masking subpallet, Mask All, and then set sel and skip to 3 and 8.   Hit Col for a nice striped mask:

Let’s restrict to our inflated area plus a nice little edge:

Inflate again:

Pretty good, but I like ’em all twisty on thumb grips.  Grab and invert a quick selection:

And Twist a couple of times (Deformation subpallet):

A quick mask and deflate on the body, add a texture, and it’s done:

Time to model, about 3 minutes.