Crash test dummies in popular culture

Vince and Larry, US Department of Transportation's anthropomophic crash test dummies.

The humanoid appearance of crash test dummies led to their becoming anthropomorphized.

In the 1980s, the US Department of Transportation launched a series of public service announcements in magazines and on television featuring the antics of two talking crash dummies named Vince and Larry who modeled seat belt safety practices through their slapstick antics. Voices were by Jack Burns and Lorenzo Music. Actors were Tony Reitano as Vince and Tom Harrison, later replaced by Whitney Rydbeck, as Larry. Typical dialogue of the PSAs is of Vince being discouraged that their efforts to prove that seat belts save lives are being ignored by the public while Larry is more optimistic. For instance, for one such spot, Larry gets the dispirited Vince out of bed by telling him that Barbara Mandrell survived her auto accident because she was convinced to wear her seat belt. The PSAs were directed by William Dear (Harry and the Hendersons; Angels in the Outfield).

The campaign, with its slogan "You can Learn a Lot from a Dummy," was very popular, and since then crash dummy characters remain a common sight in seat belt safety campaigns, especially those aimed at children.

In the early 1990s, Tyco Toys created a line of action figures called The Incredible Crash Dummies based on the characters from the ads. The colorful toys were intended to fall apart at the touch of a button on their stomachs and could easily be re-assembled. Vehicles could also be bought, which could similarly be crashed into walls and broken, and easily put back together.

The Incredible Crash Dummies line of toys featured characters such as Slick and Spin, the main duo, and their friends, Darryl, Spare Tire, and Bull. Later on, the villainous Junk Bots were introduced.

The popularity of the toys prompted a one-hour television special, The Adventures of the Incredible Crash Dummies. Unique for its time, the cartoon was produced entirely using 3D computer animation techniques. A comic book series was also produced as well as a video game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Nintendo Game Boy.

Rumors say that due to complaints from some parents groups against the "violence" inherent in the toys, the series was discontinued. A more likely explanation is that Tyco Toys was dissolved in 2001.

In 2004, a series of "Crash Dummies" animated shorts were commissioned for the FOX network, thus spawning another series of toys from Mattel through the Hot Wheels brand.

The television series MythBusters employs a crash test dummy for experiments that are too risky for the human hosts to try. "Buster" has tested, among other things, the dynamics of falling elevators, drops into water, getting a foot stuck in a washing machine, getting shot out of a drainage culvert, improper use of construction equipment and ancient attempts at space flight. Buster was redesigned in the second season of the show, giving him more realistic joints, easily replaceable wooden bones that break at the same force as human bones, and fire-proof molded silicone rubber skin.

In Discovery kids' children's educational series Crash Test Danny the title character is a living breathing crash test dummy played by Ben Langley who gets crushed, exploded and pulled apart all in the name of science. Corey taylor, lead singer of masked heavy metal group Slipknot originally wore a crash test dummie style mask early in his career.

Night of the Crash Test Dummies is one of the titles of a Far Side cartoon. The title is based on one of the cartoons, in which a horror movie titled Night of the Crash Test Dummies is shown, with several dummies rebelling against a scientist and placing him in a car to crash.

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