Managing Objects Outside of Related Objects tab

So I want to be able to manage objects outside of the related objects tab. I've looked at the Chassis B sample code and I think I generally understand the purpose of Related Objects and how to configure them in the service layer and in the UI plugin.xml configuration.


I have a use case where i want to get access to all child Thing objects in my main object, and make them accessible via the Manage tab, likely in a table view with actions.  I see i can provide a public getThings() accessor in my class implementation, and add logic in the getProperty method to return a list of Things, via a 'thing' property. Likewise in the UI (chassis-summary), I can create some javascript logic to get the Things via namespace buildDataUrl call passing a list of properties including 'thing'. 


I've tried doing the above steps in a similar fashion to display my Things.  I do get an object back, but the value seems to be a generic object, not my Thing.  How would I get my Thing object, and access its properties?  Is their some way to 'cast' the object, like in Java.


Thanks,


Eric