Turning a Personal Heirloom into a New Product

Challenge: Masterpiece Models projects are usually commercial or personal. It’s rare that we get one that is both. But that was the case when Kathy Trainor found us through the Internet with the idea to take a ceramic horse she had owned since childhood and use it as the model for a children’s bank.

Solution: Kathy’s ceramic horse had cracked over time, so from the beginning we knew we would use plastic for the bank. Our artists sculpted a new horse in a similar pose to her original, though we made it larger to serve its purpose as a bank. Using our original sculpture, we created a roto-mold form, which spins while being infused with plastic, creating the necessary hollow center. To give Kathy more of an edge when presenting the product to investors, we painted the banks in three varieties: Palomino, Paint and Appaloosa.

Result: We produced 25 prototypes, which generated enough commercial interest for us to arrange a production run of 5,000. Masterpiece Models worked with Drawbridge Design to create the commercial packaging.