As noted in the last Retrobots post, I let a long time go by without a bot-related post. Fortunately, I got some new material lined up thanks to the cyborg zombie Rex covered over the weekend. With a few days to think it over, I decided it was time to cover another item that hasn't really fit in with what I do. Thus, we have not one but two bots, one included with the Exosaur/ borged T. rex and the other an older acquisition that I picked up during one of my epic trips to my old job. To start things off, here's some shots of the new guy.
As previously introduced, this guy's official name is Astrobot, and I got him as a package deal with whatever the Hell the Ultra Exosaur is. He comes with lights, sound, a walking action and a crystal thingy that can launch as a missile. Out of form for me, I tried the electronic features soon after getting him out of the packaging, and in contrast to the Exosaur, I had no trouble getting them to work. The lights are very bright, enough that it's a good idea not to look into them (an issue taken to greater extremes with the Lanard Predator). Besides the lights and ray gun sound effects, he speaks several phrases. If you leave the walking action on, it becomes a sort of narration as he advances, beginning with "Expel intruders" and ending with, "Enemy deactivated." Here's a few pics of him in action.
"Couch... resisting."
Something I like about this guy is the head design. A lot of the time, humanoid robots don't feel thought through when it comes to shape and proportions. Big animals tend to have comparatively small heads, at least if they don't need an oversized mouth like a carnosaur or baleen whale, and a "real" robot could easily take the trend to further extremes. But a lot of giant robot designs show a head considerably larger than would be needed, even to hold a human pilot like the jaegers of Pacific Rim. (For that, the best option would be a command center in the torso with some sensor pods outside.) Here, the head is quite compact, just big enough for the sensory "visor" and a bit of ornamentation. The other bot goes in the other direction, though not as extreme as some.
If toy guns are outlawed, only outlawed toys will have guns!
I picked up this guy at a CVS in early 2016. I saw them a few times before I bought one, while I was waiting for the last bus transfer on my way to work. The store had them in black and white; I've seen images and videos of the same design in red. They were sold under the name Space Battle, which I also sighted some time ago attached to some ray gun/ lightsaber sets at Big Lots. Here's the box, because I do hold onto these things.
Compared to the Astrobot, this guy is bare bones, though he didn't cost much less. If the button is pushed, the screen on his chest (I suppose intended to represent some enemy target) lights up and there's a ubiquitous set of sound effects including voice saying "FIRE FIRE FIRE!" With two extra batteries, he will walk and torso rotates, plus the visor lights up and the "image" on the screen spins for no obvious reason. I only tested this once or twice and found it hopelessly unstable, I believe because there's nothing to make the arms move. I long since cannibalized the batteries that came with it, but scrounged two to try out the light and sound. Here's a few detail pics; I didn't bother to take one with him lit up.
The real backstory here is that I not only purchased the bot on the way to work, but kept it there for a very long time. I had already taken advantage of very liberal policies about what I could keep on my desk (it was in fact the first and last job where I had a permanent desk), so I didn't hesitate to leave him out from the day I bought him right up to when I was let go. Surprisingly, I never gave him a name, thou I considered GiRo. I had some questions and overheard comments about him, including at least one person who seemed interested in picking up his own. The one thing that kind of got me in trouble was the big, silly guns, which would be about 400 mm if he was on action-figure scale. Apparently, they didn't mind the giant robot (or patchisaurs, Galaxy Laser Team, Timmee fantasy guys, Winston the Uintathere, etc, etc.), but they didn't want anything with guns. Fortunately, I figured out the guns are removeable, so I put them away with the rest of my rotating collection of randomness. It inspired me to write the quote I already included above.
Something else I realized as I was doing this is that these guys are very big. They're virtually the same height, though the Astrobot is heavier and more imposing simply because a good part of GiRo's height is just the head. I soon realized that this pair were literally bigger than (generic) Godzilla and neck and neck with the giant Iron Giant. At that point, I considered making this a "Bigger Than Godzilla" installment, but I decided this was the feature I needed to keep going. As a closing pic, here's a lineup of the big guys.
That's all for now, more to come!
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