While we’ve been waiting for scientists and engineers to figure out how to make robots that we can have in our house, we’ve been able to fill the robot-shaped hole in our lives with toys.
It’s difficult to be entirely certain what the very first robot toy actually was, but there are a couple of contenders.
The early pioneers
The first one with a confirmed date comes from 1930. It wasn’t a ready-made object you could walk into a shop and pester your parents to buy. Instead, Meccano created an instruction booklet with directions on how to make one out of their sets, provided you had the right pieces.
In terms of robot toys, it’s a great start – the classic guy made of cubes – and because it’s Meccano, it was made of metal and could even walk.
The other contender isn’t technically a robot, but it was the first toy to use the word ‘robot’ in its name. The Buddy L Robotoy Truck was a remote-controlled truck made of metal and featured a decal of a robot in the driver’s seat. It’s difficult to be entirely sure of when it was first released – some sources say 1932, while the video above puts it in 1929. It’s definitely an early one though, and a sign that the kids were ready for robots.
The first confirmed ready-made robot toy is the Robot Lilliput, which came from Japan at some point in the late 1930s. A chunky little guy made from colourfully painted tinplate and powered by a clockwork mechanism, it was the first of many similar toys that would go on to slowly stomp through the living rooms of countless children over the following decades.
Following World War 2, many companies in Japan started churning out tinplate robots for export as robomania began spreading around the world. The 1950s were the first golden age of robot toys thanks to these clockwork wonders, and remain extremely popular with collectors.
The plastic toy revolution
Fast forward to the 1970s. Plastic toys are overtaking tin, and Japan’s love of robot toys has grown even more. While children in other countries were pretty fond of war-themed toys, the kids in Japan were all about the fantastical heroes they saw in manga, anime or live-action TV series, often involving costumed actors fighting it out in miniature city sets.
For example, when toy company Takara licensed the GI Joe action figures – what we in the UK knew as Action Man – from Hasbro, they didn’t do very well. So in 1972, Takara retooled the 12-inch soldier dollies into Henshin (meaning ‘transforming’) Cyborg. This involved making them out of transparent plastic and putting chromed machinery inside the bodies. You could swap out the limbs with other accessories and dress them up in licensed costumes of popular Japanese TV superheroes like Ultraman and Kamen Rider.
They were pretty popular, but a combination of rising costs caused by the 1973 oil crisis and a demand for smaller toys due to smaller Japanese houses led to them launching Microman in 1974. These were 3.75-inch action figures that looked very similar to Henshin Cyborg, but with more of a focus on playsets.
Microman was a much bigger hit than its predecessor, with the line continuing until 1983. The line was also licensed back to the West, where they were known as Micronauts, and were one of the most popular lines of action figures in the mid-seventies. Indeed, their popularity is why Kenner made the Star Wars action figures 3.75 inches tall.
The birth of the Transformers
By the late 1970s, Microman was losing popularity with the kids, so Takara decided to create another spinoff from it called Diaclone. With the figures being shrunk down to 3cm there was even more of a focus on the playsets, which were inspired by the trend for giant mecha – huge piloted robot war machines, basically.
While both Diaclone and Microman were pretty successful, the kids demanded constant new gimmicks, so in the early 80s the designers hopped on a new toy trend that had been emerging since the late 1970s: robots that could change into objects or vehicles. This resulted in the Car Robots subline being added to Diaclone, while the Micromen were joined by robots that could disguise themselves as guns or a Walkman.
If this is beginning to sound familiar, it’s because when the executives from Hasbro saw these toys, they grabbed up the licenses and re-imagined them as the alien robots called Transformers.
When they hit the market in 1984, they were a huge hit, supported by a popular cartoon and a comic book that ran until 1991. To this day, Hasbro and Takara are still churning them out, and the Transformers are probably the first thing most people think of if they’re asked to name a toy robot.
Early interactive robots
But while the Transformers are charismatic little guys, what the kids really want is an actual robot. Tin robots could stomp about, sometimes even shoot sparks, but they aren’t great conversationalists. One of the first attempts to create interactivity was the release of 2-XL in 1978. Essentially a glorified tape player, 2-XL could challenge kids with multiple-choice questions, with answers given through button inputs. Slightly more impressive was the Omnibot range, which added movement and a digital clock. This allowed you to program it to move to specific places at specific times, with the movement instructions recorded to a cassette tape. One model was even able to pour you a drink!
When Nintendo launched the Entertainment System console in 1985, they included R.O.B – the Robotic Operating Buddy – with it. Controlled via flashes from the TV screen, it could slowly move two spinning tops to activate buttons. Despite its iconic design, its general slowness and lack of games saw it quickly sidelined, but – luckily for Nintendo – their other games managed to sell enough to keep the lights on.
The continued development of computers and electronics throughout the eighties and nineties is when the dream of real robot toys really began to gather momentum. In 1998, Furby hit the market, delighting and horrifying people in almost equal measure due to its habit of babbling at random – sometimes even without any batteries. In 1999, Sony introduced Aibo, an interactive robot dog.
Next-generation bots in the home
Robosapien was launched in 2004. It was essentially a modern version of the tin robots, but with a bunch of modern upgrades. It could walk without needing wheels in its feet, pick things up with its claws and carry out over 60 different actions from its remote control unit.
The latest and greatest robot toy comes from Robosen, and appropriately enough, they’re making Transformers real. If you’ve ever wanted a real Optimus Prime, this is the product for you, as it can automatically transform between truck and robot modes before carrying out pre-programmed movement sequences. If you get some of the other figures, they’ll even interact with each other, although they are still ultimately very advanced and pricey ancestors of Robosapien.
But it’s an amazing indicator of how far technology has progressed since some forward-thinking engineer at Meccano had the idea to recreate one of those new-fangled robots and we stand on the verge of having actual robots sharing our homes.
