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Use a Phong shader to produce glossy plastic-looking sufaces. Phong shaders are good for modeling things like car and bathroom mouldings, and many high-tech polymers and plastics.

Aside from the attributes described here, the Phong shader inherits many attributes from its parents Reflect and Lambert. Maya also has a PhongE shader, which is very similar, and can be used to make the same kinds of materials. The difference is mostly a matter of personal preference. Other kinds of shaders you can use:
For unpolished surfaces, like chalk or matte paint, use a Lambert shader. For metallic surfaces, such as brass or aluminum, use a Blinn shader. For microgrooved surfaces like CDs, brushed metal, or hair, use an Anisotropic shader.
In the table below, important attribute have their names indicated in bold in the description column.

This node is MP safe

Node name Parents Classification MFn type Compatible function sets
phong reflect shader/surface kPhong kBase
kNamedObject
kDependencyNode
kLambert
kReflect
kPhong

Related nodes

lambert, reflect, phongE, blinn, anisotropic, volumeShader, simpleVolumeShader, surfaceShader, displacementShader, layeredShader, useBackground, defaultShaderList, shadingMap

Attributes (9)

cosinePower, miReflectionBlur, miReflectionRays, miReflectivity, miShinyness, miSpecularColor, miSpecularColorB, miSpecularColorG, miSpecularColorR

Long name (short name) Type Default Flags
cosinePower (cp) float 20.0 outputinputconnectablestorablekeyable
Cosine Power is used to control the "tightness" of the specular highlights (also called 'hot spots') on the surface. The minimum value is 2. The higher the value, the more tighly focussed (smaller) is the highlight.
miReflectionBlur (mircb) float 0 outputinputconnectablestorable
Enable reflection blur by shooting more reflection rays. Blurry reflections require supersampling because a ray direction is not exactly determined anymore. It may deviate (randomly) from the perfect specular direction, within the bounds specified by miReflectionBlur (in angle). A value of zero implies a perfectly specular interaction, a value of 90 a perfectly diffuse reflection or refraction. Values of 10 to 30 are a good starting point
miReflectionRays (mircr) short 1 outputinputconnectablestorable
Number of reflection rays to use for blurring. miReflectionRays specifies number of rays to use to sample the random deviation. In general more rays are required for more blurry reflections or refractions. Other sampling parameters also affect this setting: per-object samples and the Render Settings sample setting supersample in image space. If you increase any of these two settings, you may be able to reduce the number of rays without loss of quality, but significant performance gain.
miShinyness (mis) float 10 outputinputconnectablestorable
Photon shader shinyness parameter to control glossy reflection and refraction.
miSpecularColor (misc) float3 outputinputconnectablestorable
Photon shader specular color parameter.
miSpecularColorR (miscr) float 0.5 outputinputconnectablestorable
Red component.
miSpecularColorG (miscg) float 0.5 outputinputconnectablestorable
Green component.
miSpecularColorB (miscb) float 0.5 outputinputconnectablestorable
Blue component.
miReflectivity (mirf) float 0.5 outputinputconnectablestorable
Photon shader reflectivity parameter.