Robot Revolution: The one where Kristin Stewart kills an alien with a piano

 

 

Title: Zathura aka Zathura: A Space Adventure

What Year?: 2005

Classification: Mashup/ Weird Sequel/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

With this review, I’m continuing my series/ feature on robots. An issue that has already come up is that while robots have figured regularly in science fiction films for about as long as the genre has existed, they have often been relegated to subordinate status, typically as servants/ minions to their good or evil creators. For the most part, I have used this to narrow down the field to the comparatively manageable number of films that make robots and other AI (which I have been planning to get to) truly central to the plot. For my fourth installment, however, I decided it was time to deal with an example of the “secondary” tradition, and that brought up a movie I have been looking for a chance to cover for a while. I present Zathura, a movie where the killer robot is the least strange thing about the film.

Our story begins with an introduction to a single dad and his two elementary-age sons, who habitually bicker while their teenage (step? half???) sister hovers at the periphery. When the father leaves on an urgent errand, the two kids try playing a Gernsback sci fi-themed game that’s really more like a mechanical toy. They discover that this is more than a board game, however, as perils like meteor showers and a malfunctioning robot become reality. The continuing misadventures leave the whole house adrift in space, threatened by a marauding reptilian race. Their best chance of returning home is a mysterious friendly astronaut who has played long enough to know the rules of the game- but the wrong choice may trap them in the game forever!

Zathura was a 2005 science fantasy film directed by Jon Favreau, based on the book of the same name by Chris Van Alsburg. The film was regarded as a thematic sequel to the 1995 film Jumanji, also based on a book by Van Alsburg. Favreau stated that the film was influenced by 1970s and 1980s films including Battle Beyond The Stars. The film starred Josh Hutcherson and Jonah Bobo as the brothers, with Dax Shepard of Idiocracy as the Astronaut and Tim Robbins as their father. Kristin Stewart appeared as the sister, and Frank Oz (see Dark Crystal, An American Werewolf In London) received credit as the voice of the Robot. Suits and practical effects for robot and aliens were created by Stan Winston Studios (see Invaders From Mars, Congo, etc, etc, etc.), as part of a blend of animatronic, miniature and CGI effects used for the film and often for the same sequences and characters. The film was a commercial disappointment despite favorable reviews, earning a $65 million box office roughly equal  to its budget. Its reputation has improved as both a “cult” SF/ fantasy film and family movie. The film is available for streaming on multiple platforms.

For my experiences, I really came to this film after seeing it mentioned by a reviewer I follow intermittently, as an example of a film I didn’t know was “supposed” to be a failure. That brings in certain further complaints that I have had with the likes of The Black Hole, The Blob and The Thing (see my video on the last): Yes, films that earn their budgets back can still lose a lot of money, but I have never cared for calling a movie a “bomb”, flop, etc. on that basis alone. With the present film, I can remember favorable reviews and a prompt viewing when it came out on home video. I was immediately impressed with it as a solid and creative genre film with the potential to turn into a “classic”, and from actual viewer feedback, I would say confidently that it has lived up to its potential. That, in itself, is exactly how films end up above my radar. For this feature, I finally felt I had a reason to comment on an excellent film.

Moving forward, all the obvious arguments, counter-arguments and counter-offensive arguments come down to the simple question of realistic expectations. Yes, there are things that can be off-putting for the adult viewer, especially the interminable bickering. But this is supposed to be a kids’ movie, and it can justify itself as portraying what kids deal with in real life through what becomes both a theme and a major element of the plot. The central science fictional elements are similarly framed as science fantasy in the vein of Starcrash and Flash Gordon, with a sounder suspension of disbelief than usual. It’s worth further note, with respect to my Anachronistic Outlier category, that this is all done with a fully modern visual vocabulary. To me, the one thing worth further argument is Stewart. On many levels, her character is one thing the film would have been as good or better without. I do feel that a major reason for the easily felt redundancy is that there is no confirmation of her exact relationship with the other family members. She does contribute as the actual “voice of reason”, and her completely justified reactions mitigate the question of whether the events on-screen are in any way “real”. Any further doubts are acquitted when she finally takes on an antagonist one on one, which (as alluded in the title) I am absolutely counting as an unambiguous combat kill.

Inevitably, I have to devote a section to the robot. I will point out, first, the technical facts: This is not a “practical” rig, as I recall a contemporary reviewer assuming, but a hybrid of a Winston suit with CGI effects that was itself an astonishing innovation. As for its on-screen appearance, there’s really just one sequence of the bot in action, which would have been the “one scene” by my usual format. It’s all set up with a fake-out scare involving a toy, which on consideration is perhaps the most clever hint that the movie’s “reality” is ambiguous. (I will get to that in a moment…) When the bot does appear, it is entirely and menacingly physical.  The ensuing mayhem quickly establish it as the most formidable of the movie’s antagonists. In the process, there are also established limitations. It’s fast, though not necessarily faster than the humans. On the other hand, it is seemingly clumsy, which might be in part because it is still figuring out which parts of the house it can simply tear through. The most disconcerting reveal comes when we see it repairing itself, establishing an ongoing threat that will be handled with another clever twist. When we get a look at its clockwork guts, it is ludicrously primitive, more like Tik Tok of Oz than a Golden Age bot. But then there is the bird-like self-repair appendage, which at certain points acts like a sentient entity all its own. There’s no direct answers to this and other questions; what works is that we don’t need them to enjoy the story.

Now for the “one scene”, I was as often happens most intrigued by an otherwise innocuous scene. Right around the first-act transition, the younger brother decides to cook some macaroni and cheese. The older brother says that there will be no running water while they are literally in space. Undeterred, the younger brother turns on the tap, and water comes out, filling the pan. When he goes to the stove, the elder brother reminds them that there “should” be no gas for the burners, either. (For that matter, the power should be long gone as well.) It’s no real surprise when the burner merrily turns on. It is a brief and minor moment, yet on analysis, it is the most mindboggling moment in a story that is already running on the willful suspension of disbelief. The simple and convenient explanation is that everything we are seeing is a product of the boys’ imaginations. The quite disconcerting alternative is that whatever rules and logic still apply in this assumed universe are a matter of what the kids would know and believe. It’s a hypothesis that could have been tested, if the older brother tried the same things himself, but the story is already moving on.

In closing, what I find myself coming back to is what makes a movie a “failure” in its own or any other time. As I have previously ranted, my own formula for actual disaster is whether a movie with a budget of at least seven figures can get half of it back, and dear Logos, I have covered enough that didn’t to prove that box office results are no measure of merit. There are ones now considered classics, like Return To Oz, though I have covered many more that didn’t actually do “that” badly. (Hell, Krull pulled through at about 60%.) There are ones that at least reached the level of “cult” fandom, like Deep Rising, and others that remain divisive even in those circles, like Memoirs Of An Invisible Man. Then there are the ones so mediocre and unmemorable that they don’t even live up to their own notoriety, like Adventures of Pluto Nash. What movies like Zathura prove is that there can be justice in the long and short term. In its own time, it did well enough just by earning as much as it cost. As it approaches 20 years from its release, it has endured the tests of time, above all as a film critics, fans and audiences still talk about.  It did what it set out to do, and by my regular refrain, that’s more than enough. Onward and upward…

Futures Past: Marx 1950s -futuristic building???

 

It's Friday and I still don't have a mid-week post. I decided it was time to cover one of my most recent acquisitions before it got any deeper into the backlog. It's my biggest score yet, and in theory the one that might actually be useful for my current projects. Here is the Marx Cape Canaveral building, and it is even more awkward than it looks. To kick things off, here's a pic from the back.

Now for the backstory, this is a tin litho building introduced with the Marx Cape Canaveral playset, first released in 1958. It based on a similar structure included with the Tom Corbett/ Rex Mars playsets (see my "revisionist" post on same). The big change is that it incorporated an "overthrust" split-level extension that stretched in front of the rest of the structure. It also included a spire introduced with the very popular and now very expensive skyscraper playset released in 1957, plus a pylon piece to support the front of the extension. Of course, the latter was missing from my item, and I will be going into just how important that is momentarily. Here's a few more shots of this thing from multiple angles.

Now for this item, it came in two parts, the main building and the extension. I knew from pics of complete and unused sets that they would have come as three separate metal sheets that kids were presumably expected to fold by hand, one big one for the main structure and two for the extension. From inspection, I had no doubt that it was assembled and played with in the "vintage" period, based on both its obviously "used" condition and several minor errors in assembly. The spire was already attached to the extension, along with two other pieces. However, it was evident that the two parts had never been connected. I suppose they might have originally come from entirely different sets, though the condition of both is quite consistent. I made the fateful decision to complete the assembly, which quickly revealed two things. First, this was never intended to be disassembled. Second, without the above-mentioned support, this thing will not stay upright by any means short of putting it directly against a solid wall or surface. Here are a few detail shots.

The oddest detail here is that there are two plastic accessories on top of the extension that I have not seen on any other specimen. One is clearly the  base of the spotlight in the previously-covered space accessories, a fact I confirmed by actually attaching the top part. The other might be the base of an item usually referred to as an antenna that I maintain looks like a lamp. At first, I accepted these as attached at the factory, until I reviewed photos of other specimens. I'm still not satisfied that this was simply something a kid would have done. These are attached very solidly, enough that I am sure any attempt to remove it would end in serious damage. (Okay, I started to try. Once.) That leaves the spire, and here's one more shot of it.

Now this is very possibly the most amazing thing Marx ever made, big enough to be a retro-future tower all on its own. I had spent a good deal of time trying to get hold of one before I found the actual building on sale. By my best measurement, this is just under 5 1/4 inches tall. It would originally have been even taller thanks to an antenna that apparently had a 99.9% casualty rate in the wild. The grime alone on this one leaves no reasonable doubt that it is indeed a vintage item. This one was clearly repaired at some point, yet still ended up shorn by the time it got to me, which is really saying something if it was done at the same time and with the same materials used to attach the accessories to the roof. (Definitely be suspicious of anyone offering an "original" with the antenna still on.) I investigated whether it could be removed, before and after assembling the building, but as with most things here, this was just not meant to be taken apart. It's held in place with two tabs that can be reached from below, which might come loose if pushed or squeezed. However, I suspect they would be just as likely to break off.

That leaves the question, how well does this work with the Marx figures? Of course, I investigated that, after cleaning out the interior very carefully. What I found was that it is seemingly sized for a range of figures, without fitting any especially well. Here's a pic with the figures it would actually have come with, the already repurposed 45mm Air Force figures sighted briefly in my Robby the Robot revisit, plus the original Tomy wind-up bot. 

I confirmed that the box is tall enough to hold two of the little guys one above the other quite comfortably, which would make for something like a 12-foot ceiling in scale. And here it is with a 70 mm Space Guy and the reissue Tomy bot, plus a few very futuristic accessories.

This also gave me my first look at the very fine litho backdrop, recycled from the Tom Corbett sets. It's a very good backdrop. The obvious problem is getting any light into the back. There's also some odd details, especially the doors. At 70mm scale, they look more like lockers than functional doors. Even at nominal 45mm scale, they look odd, still a little on the small side for a door but big for anything else. Here's a reference pic with both sizes. Wow, that is dark.

I decided to see if I could hit a middle ground, and decided to try the 60mm astronauts. It's not a bad fit, but not a lot better. In any case, it's clear why Marx had phased out the Tom Corbett look.

This further convinced me that what will really help people who want to do what I do is a print-yourself template for the structure, ideally scanned from one of the unassembled flat plates still out there. Then one will have the freedom to choose lighting, backgrounds and even scale. There are already enough images out there that one could probably put together a composite, but it would still be preferable to have a single image freely offered rather than collectors swiping from each other. For now, we live and learn. How about one more pic?

"I'm mysterious. Also a mystery, why we don't have overhead lighting..."

That's all for now, still more to come!

Fiction: The Space Guys Adventure, Part 10!

 

Because I run on obsessive compulsive behavior, I decided to try to fill out a full month of blogging to end the year, so naturally, I'm starting with some Space Guys filler. As usual, the table of contents is at the end.

 

The voyage went on. Morale greatly improved as soon as the life support ring reopened, allowing the crew to return to their normal quarters and stored possessions. At six weeks, the Janus reached the first visible benchmark outside the orbit of Mars, the asteroid belt. It took another month to cross it. In that time, they sighted at least a dozen asteroids and two mining ships. There was a running correspondence between Yuri and the crew of a survey craft called Platinum Star. They had a single mishap when a tiny particle hit the windshield of the Pegasus. He went into the depressurized cabin and returned carrying a spiderwebbed pane. He found Moxon loitering in the main corridor. “Let me see that,” he said. Jason held out the pane. “It’s strong, isn’t it?”

“It’s rated to stop a 2 cm cannon shell,” Jason said. “It probably would have.”

“We’ll see,” Moxon said. He took the pane and set it upright. Then he drew his trench knife. With a single, sudden thrust, he drove the narrow blade straight through the pane. He twisted the knife back and forth.

“There’s today’s science lesson,” Moxon said. “Bullets are blunt. So are meteors. But a knife delivers power straight to a point.”

“Yeah,” Jason said. “Nice trick.”

The trooper smiled. “I’m sorry we haven’t gotten along better,” he said. “Maybe we got off on the wrong foot. But there’s still 18 months ahead. Who knows?” Jason was already withdrawing.

 

Jason watched Alek radiate as soon as she reunited with her robots. She happily introduced him to her workhorse machines, a silver machine she called Scarecrow and a gold one dubbed Patchwork Girl, or Crow and Patch for short. She insisted that they had discrete personalities, for reasons that remained elusive to him. He came closest to believing when he walked in on the pair alone.

The two robots were in the middle of the floor, on top of the hatch for an airlock. They grasped each other with pincers on the end of accordion-like arms as they did a kind of shuffle. What held his gaze was that they moved in a circle unsuited to their gait. He frowned, not at the behavior but a vague sense of order behind it. He narrowly stopped his jaw from dropping as he realized that they were going slowly and clumsily through the steps of a waltz.

“I taught them that a while ago,” Alek said in her plain lecture voice. He no longer started at finding her already at his side. She gestured with her mechanical pencil. “It was a test of their gyrostabilizers, originally. Now they do it when they are online without a task. It happens sometimes, when I give them an exercise without resetting their memory. I am still not sure which one started it. I believe Patch initiates more often than not.”

“Why haven’t you reset?” Jason said, not really questioning. “The manual says to do it every month on the outside.

“It is the only way to test the emergent properties of their AI,” Alek said. “They do improve at their tasks when I let them remember. Besides, would you do it?” Jason looked at the robots again, and shook his head.

 

With the privacy of the lab, Alek began to show new sides of herself, sometimes endearing, sometimes puzzling and occasionally alarming. She did many things to please him, or with the expectation that he would be pleased. Then there were times when he found her weeping in anger or jealousy. In those times, she would play the target shooting game, whooping, screeching or hissing depending on her fortunes. But that could get her wound up over her chief grievance, that she was not an officer. Then, as often as not, she would take control of a robotic arm in her lab that genuinely terrified Jason. “I should have been one of the 12,” she had said on one occasion. “They call me `special technician’ so they do not no have to give me a weapon.”  She proceeded to crush 3 empty rations containers and a damaged fuel pod. Jason had finally called out to Nick Chopper to restrain her. As the robot emerged and turned toward her, Alek looked ready to attack her own machine with the arm. The moment passed, and she powered down the arm. Then she wrapped herself around Jason.

Outside the privacy of the lab, Alek showed Jason the ship and introduced him to the rest of the crew. They spent much of their time in the science module, an ovoid shell 30 meters wide and 40 long that connected the life support ring with the Mission Fuselage. Its official purpose was to observe zero-gravity phenomena and test equipment. In practice, the off-duty crew frolicked back and forth across the enclosed expanse, whether leaping, propelling themselves with fire extinguishers and other improvised propulsion, or simply sliding along the flexible fabric of the inner shell. Alek’s favorite pastime was to give a yodeling call that would echo across the shell, making ripples in the supposedly sound-dampening lining.

He also spent a shift with Alek and old Yuri, long a presence more than a person, in the communications center beneath the ship’s directional communications dish. It proved to be a cabin the size of a storage shed lined with tiny monitors, which Yuri explained was a fraction of what they could receive. “This is the real center of the ship,” he said in his richly timbered voice. “If it went down, we would have no telemetry, no orders, and no movies except what we have on data discs or your record collection. Command on Gaia wouldn’t even know if we were dead or alive. That is why at least one officer is on duty at all times.” He patted the sidearm at his hip.

He pointed to a cartoon Major Maxon trading stylized blows with the monocled villain Heinz Himmelmann and his alien bodyguards. “That is from Houston,” he said. “The spaceport sends out the local station, sometime. The show, I have watched with my grandsons. They say it is a commercial for silly toys. They are not wrong. I like it. It is idealistic.”

“What about the solar interference?” Jason asked. “We can never get a signal off on Mars…”

Alek shook her head at that. “That is not solar,” she said. “Not all of it. It is the high beams from Mons, Port Eris, Columba. They broadcast to Earth, Jupiter too. Nothing you have is powerful enough to get over them. They would not let you have anything that could.” Jason had only nodded. Yuri looked at him thoughtfully.

“You know,” the elder spacer said, “when the Federation and the Union proposed a joint space program, a lot of people said it was the best way to ensure the survival of the human race, in case something went wrong on Gaia. They never quite said what. What do you think? Why would you say you’re out here?”

Jason shook his head. “I don’t know what happened back then,” he said. “But we aren’t anyone’s backup plan. We’re here to find out what’s out here.” That had gotten a smile from Yuri

 

They also paid regular visits to engineering, which to Jason’s discomfort was in the axis of the life support ring. He pointedly did not comment when Anastasia proved to be an equally frequent visitor. The outer chamber was a three-way intersection that was disorienting even for the Martians, where one of the engineers was invariably ensconced either reading or watching the single television screen. Anastasia had been on hand when Jason tried to argue over the safety of a reactor in the middle of the crew’s quarters.

“So, people get the idea that nuclear reactors can turn into an atomic bomb,” Donald said. “That’s like worrying that the engine on your petrol car will burn like a Molotov cocktail. If you want a nuclear explosion, you make a nuclear weapon. If you want nuclear power, you build something not to blow up. It’s really virtually impossible for a reactor to explode.”

“Almost,” David said from the other side of the radiation barrier. “And comparatively speaking, really.”

“Sure,” Donald said. “There’s lots of things in a reactor that can brew up if someone does something stupid. Things like that can all be contained, if you designed it right. If things go as they should, they implode, not explode.” He chuckled. “When I was Dr. Czernabeg’s student, I advised the Sheng on their first fusion reactor. Six weeks in, we got a call from one of their senior officials. It turned out that an electrical fire had burned out the control system. They flew me in to inspect the facility. By then, you could see the smoke from Shanghai. The military had set up a perimeter, but they wouldn’t go anywhere near the building. They honestly thought the fusion reactor could blow up the whole country or even the world, like a star going nova. I told them to give me a suit and a helicopter to drop me in the middle. They did it, because they thought it wouldn’t matter. As soon as I got inside, I saw exactly what I knew had happened: The reactor had melted down, right enough, but it had melted down through the floor. Then the rest of the plant had caved in on top of it. The fire was from their instruments burning.”

Jason frowned. “Didn’t the Federation have a reactor meltdown?”

“That was something different,” Anastasia said. “There was a factory that was making material for nuclear bombs, way too close to a big city. There was an explosion that blew open the containment and released the radioactive material into the atmosphere. There would have been less damage if a nuclear bomb had gone off. That was the real reason we made peace; that, and figuring out just how powerful the Alliance had become.”

That same night, Jason lay with Alek in his bunk, intermittently watching Sparky the squirrel. The adventure showed Sparky, Spunky and Tweel the Martian on Venus. They conveniently wore armored suits to protect them from the heat and pressure, at the cost of correspondingly limited movement. Sparky was currently struggling to pick up a wrench dropped while repairing their spaceship. At first, he simply could not get hold of it with the clumsy gauntlets of the suit. When he did manage to grip it, however, he found that the pressure made it impossible to pick it up. Spunky and Tweel tried to pry it off the ground, but only bent the tool. At first, he didn’t notice the raised voices, from the direction of the cabins across the main corridor where Jackie and Vasily slept, until he recognized Anastasia. He still might have done nothing, if Alek had not stirred. He patted her hand and climbed down, past Jax and Sarip. He had just passed the half-open privacy partition when Jackie crashed through the partition of Vasily’s cabin, kitty corner to theirs.

Jackie might have gone right into his own facing cabin, if he had not hit the frame of its partition. The partition he had just gone through clattered to the floor, derailed and deformed but not penetrated, as Vasily pushed his own way through. The moreno gave no more than a grunt as he assumed a defensive posture, easily drowned out by Anastasia’s shriek. The Federation pilot struck twice with his fists and once with a high kick before Jackie struck a single blow of his own, staggering his foe with a jab to the abdomen. Jason called out a half-articulate warning, before he found himself pushed aside. He glared in anger as Moxon strode past, brandishing his sheathed trench knife as a knuckleduster.

Anastasia came into view, clad in the bottom half of her fatigues and a half-fastened undergarment. When she grabbed for Vasily, he pushed her back and wheeled to face the interloper. Jason felt an irrational satisfaction as Moxon advanced. Let the man of Gaia try to separate two Martians unaided if he chose; let him try to part a lion’s jaws with one hand. Yet, he already had a foreboding sense that Moxon knew exactly what he was doing. In fact, Moxon moved faster than Jason could follow. One moment, Vasily was drawing back  his fist. The next, he was crashing down on top of the broken partition, leaving behind a suspended spray of blood that ended at Moxon’s still-raised fist.

That was when old Yuri emerged from his cabin in the cross corridor. He raised a hand to Vasily, who protested but was not bold enough to raise a fist. The elder pilot gave another warning, then planted a foot on Vasily’s chest. The younger pilot’s face flushed in rage, but he was already put in his place. That was when Anastasia emerged, dressed only in the bottom of her fatigues and her half-fastened upper undergarment. She lashed out with an open hand. Moxon might have blocked the blow, but he might not have bothered. What was clear was that he caught Ana in the breastbone, slamming her up without effort against the corner bulkhead.

Yuri turned his stern gaze to Moxon, then to Anastasia. Moxon, in turn, looked to Vasily. He rose to his feet, lifting the partition. “Go to Dr. Cahill to have your injuries examined,” Moxon said. “Say nothing of what happened. Remain there for the remainder of the cycle.” Vasily ran away with a clatter down the corridor of the ring. The trooper looked to Jackie next. “Mr. Henderson, do you wish to file a charge with the captain?” The moreno returned his stare for a moment, then withdrew to his own bed.

The trooper released Ana. She retreated behind Yuri. “We gave you quarters with the officers and the married crew,” Moxon finished. “Return there; you are confined until I decide if other arrangements are needed.” Yuri silently lifted the fallen partition and shoved it back onto its track. Then he escorted Ana away, one arm around her.

It seemed to Jason that he realized only then that he was poised to lunge. “He’s got no right,” he said. “They aren’t on our side, but they’re ours. We take care of our own, one way or the other.”

Alek took hold of his arm. “Don’t,” she said.

Jax came up more cautiously at his right. “Don’t do it, man,” he said. “You know what they did to us. We don’t know what they did to him…” That was what made him untense and step back. At that very instant, Moxon turned his head just enough to show him a half-smile before he strode away.

Table of Contents

Part 1. The demo!

Part 2. The villain!

Part 3. The world-building!

Part 4. The romance!

Part 5. The killer robot!

Part 6: The shuttle ride!

Part 7: Alternate universe pop culture!

Part 8: The launch!

Part 9: The girl talk!

Retrobots Revisited: Robby the Robot and friends!

 

After the struggling through half the usual number of posts last month, I was seriously debating whether to do anything at all this week. I finally decided I needed to get at least an off-week's worth in, and that brought me to a new acquisition. I have been trying to get scale figures I can work into pics for the Marx Space Guys adventure. I've had the hardest time with robots, mainly because the ones I had thar were closest to the look I wanted are very small or, in a certain case, bigger than generic Godzilla. I finally made a new acquisition that had been on my radar before for a somewhat lower price than I found the last time I had gone looking. I present Robby the Robot, action figure scale.

Even a robot can look good coming or going...

Now, the real story here is how I got fixed on Robby for this project. As previously recounted, Robby the Robot was a character and suit that first appeared in the 1956 film Forbidden Planet (I'm thinking about it...), and was reused or imitated regularly thereafter. Since I was a kid, I loved the robot and its design without knowing anything about the original film. In considering ideas for my next time-wasting project, it crossed my mind that Robby was very possibly the first non-anthropomorphic robot in cinema. Sure, he had arms and walked on legs, but even these were no more human-like than dictated by pure functionality. The centerpiece is the domed head, which doesn't offer even a hint of a face (notwithstanding occasional efforts by misguided artists to project one onto it), a feature which is distinctive and potentially unnerving. It's all the more noteworthy that despite this inhuman outer shell, the film portrayed the bot as "friendly" or at least neutral, a decision evidently honored as often as not in later appearances. It wasn't until the 1970s that cinema again tried non-threatening robots that didn't follow a human pattern, in the likes of Silent Running, Star Wars and The Black Hole. I quickly came to the further conclusion that Robby fit the look of the Marx figures far better than anything Marx itself had turned out. By further comparison, the bot actually included with the 70 mm space guy set I possessed was a flat washout as soon as I reexamined it.

With that in mind, what I first considered were the Tomy windup bots which started this misbegotten feature, which led to experiments I included in the Archer space people post. The original "Rascal" bots were close enough to Robby for army man scale, with the further benefit of clearly being designed to be just generic enough not to trigger a lawsuit. As a bonus, I had it in two different sizes, so it could work with the 70mm space guys. The one that really looked good was the "tall" Tomy bot, which I had even dubbed Robbie. At something like 2 and 3/8ths of an inch, this was tall enough to terrorize 54mm and 45mm army men like a set of gas masked troopers I had gotten as space marine analogs (see last month's dino post), and it had a good size compared to the original Rascal bots, something like 6-7 feet if they were 4 1/2 -5 feet. However, it was much too small to fit in in with even the 70mm space guys. What I needed was a bot at least 4 inches tall. I managed to find a few different things. What I soon settled on was a Diamond Select Vinimate of Robby, from the same outfit that made my Black Hole bots, described most places as 4 inches tall. This, of course, is the bot featured above. Here he is with a Rascal bot.

"You picking on my little brother?"

And why not the Truckstop Queen?

If anything, this bot was more than I bargained for. It was definitely well over 4 inches tall, possibly even 5, not much smaller than the Queen. Assuming a 1/18 scale for the largest Space Guys, that gave a height of up to 7.5 feet. On careful measurement, which I already knew would be tricky after trying it with the windup bots, I concluded he topped out at about 4 and 3/4ths inches, which still came out at over 7 feet. He would actually be even taller if his proportions were closer to the movie bot. On the other hand, the squashed shape makes him more massive, and it keeps this a few degrees away from stealing the movie esign outright. Here he is with an MPC Teenette figure I got to represent a character named Alek Kapek, listed as 90mm with the base.

Yeah, the jokes are already writing themselves.

And here he is in a battle with the protagonist/ knife guy. The guy is already a little over 4 inches, wonky pose and all. The bot is still obviously taller. For a little color, I used the Mexican day glo figures.

Now for some fun, here's the bots with some figures and props. First up, part of a new reissue Marx space accessory set!

And a few air base figures...

And a couple Evermodel ladies I got. These are quite good "civilian" figures for a very good price, but you want them unpainted, because the paintwork this company does is incredibly awful.

"You're cute, but I'm already dating the Iron Giant."

And leading the space marines. That's the Mold-A-Rama space capsule behind them. This was really a test whether I could take a pic with the gigantic base cropped out.

And here's the big guy with Moxon, the obvious villain, with another piece from the accessory set. I think for once, his "scar" is showing pretty well.

And here's something extra. This is a wind-up from Schylling that I've included in pics at least once, purchased around 2007. It was and is sold under the name Planet Robot, with artwork implying that it is a reissue or copy of a 1950s-'60s toy. I suspect it's of much more recent origin. Still, it captures the look of both Robby the Robot and vintage tin toys. I can't see working him in unless I also include some of the Marx 6 inch figures. Here he is withe Truckstop Queen and Connie.

And that's enough for me to wrap this up. This is what makes this blog fun, and I'm glad to be finally trying to turn it into an actual story. That's all for now, more to come!

Rogues' Roundup: Christmas robot toys!

 

It's time for yet another Christmas post, and as you might guess, I have a big backlog of junk I could use. The big surprise is that a lot of this is stuff people just give to me, or at least things I got in "white elephant" exchanges. For this post, I also did some maintenance and even took a bit of video. To kick things off, here's the central exhibit and I believe the first one I got, a jazz reindeer!

Legalize it! Mistletoe, that is...

For the history, I think I got this in 2016 or so. When I got him, he would play "Jingle Bells" and do a sort of dance. The tag that would give the usual date and manufacturer's info appears to have been deliberately removed. To my further recollection, there was some extra stuff tacked on that I removed. However, I never seriously doubted that the saxophone came with the figure, though at this point, it's only securely attached to his mouth, which makes it look like an oversized pipe. He proved to pose the most issues when I tried to get him to work, something I'll get to further in. For now, here's one more pic with generic Godzilla. The big guy's taller, but not by a lot.

"Oh yeah, I was tripping every frame of Godzilla vs. Hedorah..."

Next up, we have the most elaborate gimmick of the group. It's a regular dancing reindeer, except it also has a light-up fan that spells out a holiday message. I got it in a box I lost track of. A tag says "Newtoys", but doesn't give a date. Here's the toy.

And here's the other two. The first is a more or less realistic dog that "sings" and rolls around. A tag gives the company name Kids For America and the date 2007. The other is a more cartoony character that swings his head around to the tune. A tag on one ear gives the product name Puppy Precious, and advertises that it plays 10 songs, but I can find no other info. Both make a barking sound tuned to the music. Another common denominator is that they are very overpowered, which I will get to. Here's a couple pics, with a Marx Soviet soldier for reference, because we haven't had giant Marx lately.

"Gaahh! Capitalist consumerist killer robot attack dog!"

With this lineup in places the real question was if I could get them to work. I set up a work area on the Couch Mark 2, got out a bunch of batteries, and set things up to upload to my misbegotten Youtube channel. As alluded above, the big reindeer required the most work. At the start, he would play a few notes of music without doing anything else. With a change of batteries, he would play music again, but didn't move. I turned the neck and joints, and gave it a few more tries, and eventually he did start dancing again. Unfortunately, he's very prone to falling over, an issue I had noted previously. Here's the before and after.

The reindeer with the fan posed a different kind of problem. A change of batteries got it to play and light up. The real difficulty is that the head isn't clear of the fan. To get a good recording, I had to adjust the head to keep the fan from snagging. Here's the Youtube clip.

Singing Reindeer with LED fan! - YouTube

The kaiju dog proved to be the easiest to deal with. The Dogzilla is billed as singing and dancing, but he really just swings the giant head back and forth like he's shaking a rat. Here is his big moment.

Then for the finale, I had the rolling dog. I had him working before the others, with just a change of batteries. Most if not all the action is from the massive tail and what must be a very powerful motor. I quickly learned not to hold onto the toy during a demonstration, because getting your hand in the way borders on painful and certainly can't be good for the toy. For this post, I set up a squad of the giant Marx figures for a little fun. The humanity...

Vintage Marx figures vs. Christmas robot dog! - YouTube

And with that, I'm done for today. Merry Christmas; life and light; and praise to the Logos made flesh. That's all for now, more to come!

Bigger than Godzilla! Robbie the Robot

 

For this weekend, I wanted to get back to a toy blog post, and I decided to bring back a feature I thought I might be done with. The new development is that I finally picked up something I had known about for a while, and like many things I've covered it was all at the local Walmart. I introduce Robbie the Robot, in and out of the box.

By way of introduction, Robbie the Robot was possibly the first non-human "character" in science fiction to take on a life independent of the film he/ it first appeared in. The bot was first created for the 1950s classic Forbidden Planet (which I admit I have still never seen). The suit/ prop was impressive and expensive enough that it was regularly reused in later films and television, including episodes of Twilight Zone and Columbo and (allegedly) the Fred Olen Ray  direct-to-video film Phantom Empire.  The fate of the original bot became something of an existentialist riddle, as several copies emerged based on replicas of varying faithfulness and perhaps on spare or discarded parts created for Forbidden Planet. The "authentic" suit is believed to have been in the hands of a series of collectors since the early 1970s, though it is itself known to have been partially rebuilt at various time.

With the popularity of the character and design, there were inevitably a number of authorized and unauthorized toys and models. I personally have followed these with far more interest than the bot's screen appearances. I covered parts of this search previously in my posts on the Tomy Rascal/ Pocket Bots mini-line. At one time or another, I made further sightings of more direct representations of the character. I particularly recall a beautiful windup bot that popped up here ant there in the 1990s, which I am fairly sure was a now-costly model from Tamiya. The only one I actually bought was a reissue Schylling tin toy "Planet Robot" I've been meaning to get to, which was effectively a knockoff that took on a life of its own. In recent years, the pickings had gotten quite thin, with a tendency toward overpriced "deformed" figurines.

I was still surveying these new and old offerings when the Walmart bought hit the scene, as a partner to the giant Iron Giant. My immediate reaction was that it didn't really suit my interests and tastes, the main reason I didn't buy it much sooner. It also literally magnified certain flaws that were probably there all along, particularly the prominent oversized and overcomplicated circuitry. Still, it was clearly the largest available and also the cheapest, priced like the Iron Giant and the Alien Queen at $20. I finally decided to get it after a merchant selling one of the figurines quoted a price of only a little less for shipping alone. Here's some more pics of what I got for the money.

Obviously, this item is reasonably detailed as well as big, a bit more so than casual inspection in the package would show. In contrast to the Iron Giant, the arms have a good range of motion. The pleasant surprise was the walking motion, which I usually barely pay attention to. The figure is stable, even on just a book (the alternative was the bathroom floor, and I'd rather run a toy on a sidewalk), and the motion is realistic. The head and torso swing back and forth in a pretty good arc. This gets to the one drawback, which is that the toy doesn't have a "default" position. If you push the button to stop it, it usually stops with different parts pointing in in random directions, an issue which will be evident in the photos despite my best efforts, and the stationary figure definitely looks much better with the upper and lower body lined up.

This leaves the question, how big is the damn thing. He's definitely shorter than the Iron Giant, and probably still a bit taller than this feature's benchmark, the generic Godzilla. Here's some reference pics.

All in all, this is a nice addition to the Robbie legacy, and certainly worth the price if you can still get it from Walmart. Unfortunately, it's already getting scalped for much more, which might be enough to tarnish it in the eyes of more seasoned collectors. Still, cool is cool in any decade, and it's safe to say this isn't the last we'll see of Robbie the Robot.