Like in this question, except I want to be able to have querysets that return a mixed body of objects: >>> Product.objects.all() [<SimpleProduct: ...>, <OtherProduct: ...>, <BlueProduct: ...>, ...] I figured out that I can't just set Product.Meta.abstract to true or otherwise just OR together querysets of differing objects. Fine, but these are all subclasses of a common class, so if I leave their superclass as non-abstract I should be happy, so long as I can get its manager to return objects of the proper class. The query code in django does its thing, and just makes calls to Product(). Sounds easy enough, except it blows up when I override Product.__new__, I'm guessing because of the __metaclass__ in Model... Here's non-django code that behaves pretty much how I want it: class Top(object): _counter = 0 def __init__(self, arg): Top._counter += 1 print "Top#__init__(%s) called %d times" % (arg, Top._counter) class A(Top): def __new__(cls, *args, **kwargs): if cls is A and len(args) > 0: if args[0] is B.fav: return B(*args, **kwargs) elif args[0] is C.fav: return C(*args, **kwargs) else: print "PRETENDING TO BE ABSTRACT" return None # or raise? else: return super(A).__new__(cls, *args, **kwargs) class B(A): fav = 1 class C(A): fav = 2 A(0) # => None A(1) # => <B object> A(2) # => <C object> But that fails if I inherit from django.db.models.Model instead of object: File "/home/martin/beehive/apps/hello_world/models.py", line 50, in <module> A(0) TypeError: unbound method __new__() must be called with A instance as first argument (got ModelBase instance instead) Which is a notably crappy backtrace; I can't step into the frame of my __new__ code in the debugger, either. I have variously tried super(A, cls), Top, super(A, A), and all of the above in combination with passing cls in as the first argument to __new__, all to no avail. Why is this kicking me so hard? Do I have to figure out django's metaclasses to be able to fix this or is there a better way to accomplish my ends?