I was a dummy and purchased a dummy ...

March 14, 2008 9:40 AM

Help me find some good ideas to put a cellphone dummy (as in not a real cellphone, but a plastic one) to some fun use

I bought a cellphone dummy of ebay, don't ask me why, it just happend, i'm very ashamed.
Help me find some fun uses for it that help me over the frustation.
Like a nice prank i could play on somebody, using it.
If it involves destroying it, that is no problem since i didn't pay a lot for it.
It's just to frustrating for me to give it away.
By the way, it is a siemens m75 model, which is waterproof and dust resistant (the real phone, not my dummy, i guess)

posted by kall to technology (14 comments total)

I've been meaning to use an old cellphone I have as an enclosure for a Tv-B-Gone kit. Probably not necessary to be that stealthy but it seemed like it would be fun.
posted by phearlez at 9:42 AM on March 14, 2008

If you go to Best Buy, you'll notice a bin by the front entrance. One of these slots is for recycling cell phones. If the guard isn't watching, you can reach your hand in there and Voila! Instant cell phone baseball party.
posted by sonicbloom at 9:47 AM on March 14, 2008

Probably not along the lines you're thinking, but younger children LOVE playing with these (assuming the dummy doesn't have any small parts).
posted by smitt at 9:53 AM on March 14, 2008

It's St. Pat's weekend, slip it in your pocket and hit the bars. When some drunk asks to borrow your phone to call a cab, hand over the fake and watch them try their best to make a call.
posted by waxboy at 9:54 AM on March 14, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

Wait for the holiday season, then take your phone out to the mall and pretend to have long conversations about how rampant consumerism has left you all hollow and empty inside.
posted by box at 9:57 AM on March 14, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Throw it in a urinal or down a toilet. You won't see the results but ypu can bet someone will try and get it.
posted by fire&wings at 10:08 AM on March 14, 2008

You could take it to your local cellphone store and ask them if they can help you figure out why the phone you bought somewhere else doesn't work properly. Ask them if they know how to fix it. When they say that it's not a real phone act very confused and pretend not to understand what they are talking about.

For an added bonus aspect of the prank, you could make an obvoiusly fake "rrrring" noise and then pretend to answer the phone. Then tell the person who works at the cellphone store that it's working now and you don't need it fixed.
posted by burnmp3s at 10:18 AM on March 14, 2008 [7 favorites has favorites]

This is sappy, but...

Put it in a crappy handbag with a few other worthless but convincing things (keys that don't go anywhere, a wallet with fake credit cards) and your actual phone number, and "lose" it. If someone returns it to you, give them a wonderful reward. Repeat as desired.
posted by Metroid Baby at 10:24 AM on March 14, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

Well, maybe it's because I'm sick and feeling sappy, but I love Metroid Baby's idea.
posted by peep at 11:20 AM on March 14, 2008

If you frequent a local dive bar and grill type place (the type that has dollar bills from customers and other assorted crap stuck on the walls) you could talk the manager into letting you superglue it to the bar and have the pleasure of watching people try to pick it up.
posted by TedW at 11:40 AM on March 14, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

If you haven't yet told friends, you've got to walk around having pretend conversations, and then say, "It's for you" and hand them the phone.

Or, have an angry "conversation" and chuck the phone at the wall / off a cliff / etc. (I saw a Razr dummy back when the Razrs were super-expensive and almost bought one for this purpose, except that it ended up going for a lot of money.)

At my college library, several students have have recently had their cell phones stolen when they looked the other way for a brief moment. I would love to watch someone swipe a dummy phone.

On the off-change that you got one of the "hollow" style dummies (as opposed to the realistic-feeling ones), it's begging to be filled with something. The marginally-cool one is to fill it with water, and make sure there's a small hole. Use it to squirt people, or just "talk" with water oozing out of your phone. The slightly better solution is to fill it with something incredibly dense, such as cement or lead.

The awesome thing to fill it with would be helium, though, especially if it's light enough that you can get it to that delicate point where it pretty much just hovers. That would be fun. (Especially if you can do it at some event where most people are sufficiently lubricated to not think too critically about it.)
posted by fogster at 12:38 PM on March 14, 2008

The awesome thing to fill it with would be helium, though, especially if it's light enough that you can get it to that delicate point where it pretty much just hovers. That would be fun. (Especially if you can do it at some event where most people are sufficiently lubricated to not think too critically about it.)

This is very unlikely to work. Unless the dummy is absurdly light, it almost certainly cannot contain enough helium to produce the buoyancy it would need to float (or even fall noticeably more slowly).
posted by sindark at 1:13 PM on March 14, 2008

I have about 6 of these I bought for a buck a piece or so, and am watching this thread intently. Mine are solid, anyone know what's in them if I were to try to pry em open and fill them with junk?
posted by Iteki at 2:51 PM on March 14, 2008

I pried the back off one once, and found a chunk of metal where the battery would be.
posted by flod logic at 9:41 PM on March 14, 2008