Plastic Fantastic

Something for creatives to consider when the next Screen Actors Guild strike looms: Not since Andrew McCarthy took a roll in the junior’s department with a less-than-human Kim Cattrall in 1987’s Mannequin have the plastic dolls had such a high profile. In Merkley Newman Harty & Partners’ Mercedes-Benz spot for its new CLK model, which broke last month, a bevy of mannequins crowd inquisitively around the car in a showroom. An ad from Leo Burnett in Chicago for Dryel, which broke last summer, shows a mannequin taking a trip to the laundromat.