beyond the uncanny valley of the dolls

Apparently, there is a market (novelty restaurants or Renaissance Faires, I am thinking) for talking automaton, which a firm specialising in such custom, made-to-order dolls.
Dangerous Minds features a selection from the company’s exactingly bizarre and surpassingly creepy catalogue, and while these animatronic characters aren’t realistic they nonetheless can elicit unease and there’s a strange resemblance in all of the models to celebrities and politicians that does not seem intentional but comes through.