Racialized mannequins were a common sight in the museums of the early American republic. These life-sized models could differ significantly in terms of their materiality and their exhibition. Most were cast from dyed beeswax in American or European workshops. However, some likenesses of "Chinese mandarins" were in fact repurposed clay decorations imported from Canton. In terms of display, the majority of racialized figures were framed in an ethnographic light. Spectators would ostensibly learn about the different peoples of the world through their encounters with various "Indians," "mandarins," and "Sandwich Islanders"-many of which were dressed in "authentic" material culture. Models of Black bodies, meanwhile, stood out for their lack of didactic trappings; these were almost always posed in scenes that white audiences were meant to find entertaining. All these figures commonly emerged during an era when Euro-Americans were thinking about human difference in new ways. Developing "scientific" notions of race encouraged the belief that nonwhite peoples were innately and physiologically inferior to their European and Euro-American counterparts. This study uses racialized mannequins to examine the arbitrary and contradictory ways in which such fantasies spread among the American public. These authoritative sources that supposedly demonstrated inherent human difference were either recycled household ornaments or waxen bodies whose ascribed identities could change with a coat of paint or change of clothes.