Prototyping a dummy

Many shops use dummies to help them display their merchandises. Fashion boutiques use mannequin dummies to wear their clothes. Restaurants display fake dishes to make you crave their meals.

The dummies are used in many ways, such as props for backgrounds in movies, television shows, theatrical plays, and trade shows. Dummies are also used to display lifelike replicas of for restaurants, grocery chains, museums, buffets, and in many other instances in which real items cannot be displayed. For example, many restaurants use fake foods to display their popular dishes in their windows and attract customers.

How are dummies made? The original item is dipped in silicone to create a mold. A liquid plastic of the correct color, typically vinyl chloride, is poured into the mold, then heated in an oven until it solidifies. Any excess vinyl buildup is trimmed off. Next, the replica is painted either by hand or airbrush to create a realistic look and feel. If the item is made out of several parts, such as a hamburger, the item is assembled from many vinyl pieces.

Once made from wax, today they are usually made out of plastic. The plastic models are mostly handmade: the models are custom-tailored to the buyers and common items can be modified to match each establishment's singularities.

For fake food for example, today’s manufacturing technologies and high quality plastic materials provide realistic-looking fake food replicas. Approximately 95% of all fake food is still handcrafted by artisans and highly trained craftsmen.

The world of perfume has their dummy bottles as well. Also called factices, they are an advertising store display bottle that is lent to a perfume vendor (department stores) by the perfume house and are not meant for retail sale. The bottles are exact replicas of the normal perfume bottles. The bases may be acid stamped or etched with "dummy", "factice" or a "D" engraved into the glass. However, a perfume dummy is not a tester: testersare advertising bottles filled with actual perfume and are meant to be used.

Read our upcoming Case Study this Thursday to discover how we created a dummy for one of our clients.

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