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Idea

Life-like martial arts training dolls modelled by famous people

Image credit: Madame Tussauds, Muhammad Ali

Darko Savic

Darko Savic Jul 13, 2021

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The idea is to create a startup company that produces life-like martial arts training dolls that look and feel like known VIP. Think Madamme Tussauds vax dolls, only made durable for sparring practice.

Want to practice against Connor McGregor, Bruce Lee, Mike Tyson, or Mohammad Ali? No problem. People could order a sparring opponent made in the image of any of the available VIPs or at an extra cost have a new person re-created. An old enemy maybe?:)

The doll's skeleton could be made out of aluminium tubes. 
The joints could be made out of springs so they are somewhat movable.
The body could be made out of ballistic gel or something similar that can take decades of beating without degrading. Maybe something polyurethane-based.
The finished sparring doll could be sprayed with polyurea to make it durable.
To minimize the complexity the body shapes could be reused for people that are similarly built.

I'm thinking a startup could do well selling these.

martial arts startup ideas

4

Creative contributions

Even more personalized add-on - the voice response

jnikola

jnikola Jul 18, 2021

I think this is a great idea. Hitting a regular boxing bag can become really boring. It doesn't matter if you are a pro or a recreational, it would lift your motivation if you had a personalized opponent looking like Conor McGregor. The thing is that it can be very helpful for professionals to practice on real-size models, do the guillotine on their necks, and practice take-downs by the opponent's real weight. That means that you can develop different dools for hitting and wrestling, too. 

What would add an extra layer of personalization would be the voice response in the opponent's real voice. It would be developed based on the previous fights, comments they would use to provoke the opponent, but with your name used.

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Novelty

Spook Louw

Spook Louw Jul 14, 2021

I absolutely love this idea. The scene from Fight Club comes to mind, where Tyler Durden asks "If you could fight any historic figure, who would you fight?" and the narrator replies "I'd fight Gandhi."

This would add such a cool personalization to fighting dolls, and I can't imagine that it would take that much effort to customize the doll's exterior. People who casually work out might get these just for the novelty, while professional fighters could use it as mental preparation as well.

Gyms would jump at the chance to have a figure of some famous fighter as a fighting doll. They already tend to be filled with posters of these famous sportsmen, I'm sure they would relish the chance to fight the likeness of Ali or Tyson. 

While getting dolls customized to resemble regular people might be a bit creepy, celebrities are fair game, as their images are already being sold. 

I would definitely spend money on a product like this!

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Custom orders

Darko Savic

Darko Savic Jul 13, 2021

People could send in the opponent's dimensions, preferred stance, and a bunch of photos or some kind of scan of the face/head. A custom sparring opponent doll would then be made and sent to them.

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Privacy issues

Povilas S

Povilas S Jul 18, 2021

It's a good idea but I'm wondering whether those celebrities wouldn't get annoyed knowing that someone is beating their face every single day. People would perhaps start filming the process, uploading it on youtube, etc. for others to see how they are "kicking Tyson's but". Even though those are just dolls, but I personally wouldn't want someone having my exact copy-doll to beat it whenever they want. I think most people would have that kind of reaction. Of course, someone could use anyone's picture to stick on a doll anytime and no one would know, but if we're talking about an official mass-producing company, then it's a different situation.

I'm not even sure who would get more frustrated - celebrities or regular people. Celebrities tend to value and protect their status, so world-famous fighters might dislike the idea because of that. On the other hand, at least they are used to their image being displayed everywhere. On the contrary, if someone asked to produce a doll of their life "enemy", that enemy most certainly wouldn't be happy about this, unless maybe they do the same:)

A solution to this, at least or especially in the case of celebrities could be to offer a percentage of sales to the famous person in whose image the doll is sculpted. The more people will desire the doll of a particular celebrity fighter, the more funds that person will receive from the sales. But in any case, I think this issue should be addressed one way or another before such a company could start the production and sales.

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Shubhankar Kulkarni

Shubhankar Kulkarni3 years ago

Apart from the legal issues, is the idea as bad as the online trolling and photoshopping of images that the celebrities face? Isn't it a part of being a celebrity? :) Some people admire you and some might hate you.

For regular people, maybe if you and your enemy decide to buy dolls of each other, you may be given a huge discount :)

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Darko Savic

Darko Savic3 years ago

It seems you are correct. There are at least a few laws such as:
- A person's Right of Publicity under California Civ. Code 3344 
- False Association under Lanham Act 15 U.S.C. 1125(a)

Permission from the person is needed.

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Povilas S

Povilas S3 years ago

Darko Savic It will probably differ with each country, but anyway, it's definitely something to address.

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