What is Rogun?

 Arco's Rogun is a mystery to me 

Is it a toy robot or something else? 

Anyone come across a Rogun?

Elbow Grease: The Armatron

I never had an Armatron. I was too old in the 80's but 15 years earlier I would have loved one to pick up my Major Matts.

Such a simple idea, a toy robotic arm and grabber that can be controlled. It's sort of Transformerish-looking too. I assume it's Japanese.

I wonder if it's still being made?

The pet arm pops up in a lot of films too. Tony Stark has one in Iron Man and it somehow seems almost human in its mannerisms, which is an odd thing. Maybe we can relate to anything that looks like a human arm, even a clunky robot one, and grow fond of it.

Did you have an Armatron? 

Ex Machina

I re-watched Ex Machina last night,

A future flick from 2014. I enjoyed it but not ecstatically.

Basically about a gynoid called Ava, an imprisoned innocent and a megalomaniac, Ex M was an AI vision made when, unlike today, AI wasn't part of everything everywhere. 

The film is good to look at: minimal, stark, clean and polished. The inside of the house is a pristine underground white rat maze like you'd see on Grand Designs. Outside it's a shack in a remote lush valley. 

SPOILER! I found it awkwardly tense and ultimately a bit depressing, the robot killing it's captor in order to live in the real world, the innocent sacrificed.

Prescient it was and I'm still wondering what would an AI being like Ava do in a world full of humans?

It's probably not long before we find out.

Have you seen Ex Machina?

Century 21 Toys Luna Len Model Number Anyone?

I'm trying to figure out the model number of this obscure Century 21 Toys toy, Luna Len.

In this battered box I saw online it appears to be A91 on the top flap.

Can anyone confirm that? 

Luna Len was released by many toy companies Including Mortoys, Mego and more.

Alphadrome has compiled a fabulous rogues gallery of them on their site.

 https://share.google/ktB8xqeTq29RLoB2h

The Klatu Quasar Mystery

I think we've seen this before on MC, a very unusual and mysterious money bank. 

With the sound of GORT's Klaatu Barada Nikto echoing round the memory banks, this is .....

..... The Klatu android money bank by Quasar Industries of San Francisco from 1975.

It's branded on the neck of its baseball head.

One outlet was National Airlines. I can't see a coin slot though!

Here's a bagged version with another name too, Alsco. Who are they?

The sticker label 'Robots by Quasar' hints at another story connected to this bank. Quasar supposedly used them as promotional items for their upcoming home android range, real home androids for sweeping, cooking and nannying. In some quarters it's described as a hoax.

Did Quasar make anything else?

But the robot nanny hoax may actually hold the key to its true origin.

Could the Quasar bank have been inspired by this nanny robot that appeared in the TV series Logan's Run? Was the robot also called Klatu?

They're very similar whatever!

What do you think? Connected?

There are more fabulous domestic snaps of the Logan's Run nanny bot on the Atomic Chronograph Tumblr site for you to consider readers. 

 https://share.google/xHgHoMyxj6X1w8e9u

Bob's Machine Man and Emma Peel

Woodsy,

In your "Meet me at the Turnpike" post, you asked me which robot I received as a kid as a alternative to the Bandai space vehicles. It was Machine Man. An early Japan tin battery operated robot.

Here's a Pic of replacement robot from my collection. I destroyed the original as a kid!

The robot was seen later in the hands of my childhood crush Diana Rigg aka Emma Peel in "The Avengers".

Anyone else?

Bob Aucutt

USA

W E S T W O R L D

Having inadvertantly subscribed to NOW TV for a month I've been cramming in as much Westworld watching as I can late at night when everyone's in bed. 

I loved Yul Brynner's original Terminatoresque madbot gunslinger when I was a kid (never seen Futureworld though), so I was sad when I only saw a bit of HBO's epic series first time round. It went pay to view I think and vanished. 

This time I'm properly captivated and thoroughly enjoying it. 

Oddly, I adore the late Michael Crichton's view of the world, that large-scale man-made networks, in his particular case theme parks, will eventually screw up and break free. The very definition of SNAFU! 

I only need to consider BBC News coverage of Vogue's controversial debut use of a female AI supermodel in this month's mag to see how its starts, artificial perfection. But hey, maybe I'm just watching too much Westworld so ignore me! 

Anyways, the series is phenomenal and the slow collapse of the park's systems and the growing sentience of the liberated and vengeful cyborgs (is that what they are? Or are they androids?) is riveting. Like a town full of Terminators!

I'm currently at a point where the story arcs of pivotal characters, both robot and human, are coming to a head and intriguing new beginnings beckon. 

There's a whiff of a new park round the corner too, Samurai World!

I simply cannot wait!

Do you like Westworld readers? I wonder if there's ever been any toys or collectables?

Glimpses of Machinery

Discussing droids among us earlier in the month I recalled some songs about futuristic machines.

The earliest I remember is the fabulous Memory of a Free Festival by David Bowie. I was enthralled as a 12 year old with it vision of young people communing with Venusians and a Sun Machine:

We scanned the skies with rainbow eyes

And saw machines of every shape and size

We talked with tall Venusians passing through

And Peter tried to climb aboard

But the Captain shook his head and away they soared

Climbing through the ivory vibrant cloud

Someone passed some bliss among the crowd

And We walked back to the road, unchained

The Sun Machine is coming down, and we're gonna have a party.

Similar but darker is Bowie's Saviour Machine and it's terrifying mantra of My logic Says Burn! 

President Joe once had a dream

The world held his hand, gave their pledge

So he told them his scheme for a Saviour Machine

They called it the Prayer, its answer was law

Its logic stopped war, gave them food

How they adored till it cried in its boredom

Please don't believe in me, please disagree with me

Life is too easy, a plague seems quite feasible now

Or maybe a war, or I may kill you all

Don't let me stay, don't let me stay

My logic says burn so send me away

Your minds are too green, I despise all I've seen

You can't stake your lives on a Saviour Machine

I need you flying, and I'll show that dying

Is living beyond reason, sacred dimension of time

I perceive every sign, I can steal every mind

Don't let me stay, don't let me stay

My logic says burn so send me away

Your minds are too green, I despise all I've seen

You can't stake your lives on a Saviour Machine

More recently those guitaring geeksters Radiohead described in stark terms modern mans' banal future sung-spoken in a robot's spooky voice:

Fitter happier

More productive

Comfortable

Not drinking too much

Regular exercise at the gym (3 days a week)

Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries

At ease

Eating well (no more microwave dinners and saturated fats)

A patient, better driver

A safer car (baby smiling in back seat)

Sleeping well (no bad dreams)

No paranoia

Careful to all animals (never washing spiders down the plughole)

Keep in contact with old friends (enjoy a drink now and then)

Will frequently check credit at (moral) bank (hole in the wall)

Favours for favours

Fond but not in love

Charity standing orders

On Sundays ring road supermarket

(No killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants)

Car wash (also on Sundays)

No longer afraid of the dark or midday shadows

Nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate

Nothing so childish

At a better pace

Slower and more calculated

No chance of escape

Now self-employed

Concerned (but powerless)

An empowered and informed member of society (pragmatism not idealism)

Will not cry in public

Less chance of illness

Tyres that grip in the wet (shot of baby strapped in back seat)

A good memory

Still cries at a good film

Still kisses with saliva

No longer empty and frantic

Like a cat

Tied to a stick

That's driven into

Frozen winter shit (the ability to laugh at weakness)

Calm

Fitter, healthier and more productive

A pig

In a cage

On antibiotics

On my CD player this month I've been enjoying the cyborg imagery of Turin Brakes' Underdog:

Two black lines streaming out like a guidance line.

Put one foot on the road now where the cyborgs are driving,

With the WD-40 in their veins the screeching little brakes complain.

And their starkly evocative Future boy with lines like:

Why are you pushing info into me,

I have no need for it, I'm from the stars.

Perhaps the earliest futuristic passage that appeared on MC back at the beginning was this brilliant but dark imagery by Damon Knight in his short story Masks. It even references a Moon Prospector! 

The prospector was climbing a crater slope with its handling members retracted and its head tilted up. Behind it the distant ringwall and the horizon, the black sky, the pin-point stars. And he was there, and it was not far enough, not yet, for the Earth hung overhead like a rotten fruit, blue with mold, crawling, wrinkling, purulent and alive.

What's your favourite lyric, line, verse or passage about machines,bots, droids and spaceships readers? 

My Pizza was Served by Droids

 At Center Parcs last week we were partly served by a robot in a pizza joint. 

A human lady took our order but the food travelled from the kitchen to us on a trolley droid, after which, the human lady then still placed the meals on our table.

I imagine in some tech-drenched countries the human lady is no more and all her functions have been replaced by machines. Maybe even the cooking itself, with droid chefs roasting chickens and testing the soup!

I'm unsure what I feel about the ongoing robot and AI creep into our lives. It seems unstoppable. How far will it go?

The Thunderbirds boy in me loves it, the old luddite Sixty something not so much.

Is this the future Century 21 showed us and I just can't see it fully yet?

What do you think about robots among us readers?

The Electric State

Over the last few years there's been a handful of futuristic series and films on streaming that have mixed tech, robotics and humans startlingly well in my opinion.

Fall Out was one such show, the story of underground human settlements surviving a nuclear winter. The standout character was the mutated sheriff in the badlands.

Then there was the film The Creator, which blew me away with it's ground-searching floodlights emitted from vast government flying craft. Amazing imagery all round.

Recently came The Electric State, which I enjoyed a lot. I know it's a polarising film but I liked the juxtaposition of old tech, ai tech, cyborgs and people. The abandoned amusement park-style zone where old bits dwelled was great. I particularly liked the big ball-headed giant bot in the last battle. At it's heart though was a desperate quest and a vein of sorrow.

This of course has been done before with the film AI many years ago, a film for personal reasons I find difficult to watch, although I think it's a terrific flick.

Last week came the Artifice Girl. Again, whispers of AI's David, together with his longevity as the AI girl outlives it's creator. I didn't see all of it. 

The sentiment that AI robots will outlive us all seems to run through all these films, a machined longevity which brings them nothing but loneliness.

What do you think readers?

A WORM IN MY OR

I was completely amazed by the real and unique Or and Orbitor toy owned by John Eaton and published on his Major Matt Mason blog [thanks Paul V.] 

Regarding John's Or itself, its such a cute and fragile-looking plastic alien creature in two attractive colours. Its a really appealing figure, almost Bruderesque and would 'sit' well among the Colourforms Outrer Space Men too, as well as its stablemates Callisto, Captain Lazer and Scorpio.

Seeing Or made me think of other similar insectoid robots. I couldn't find any contemporaries of Or from the 1960's but there are a few from later decades that have those creepy crawly robot chops.

There's the modern dancing robot.

Kenner's Star Wars droid with Or-like legs.

One of many Japanese candy premiums. I don't know how old these are.

The spinner itself, the Orbitor, recalls in looks my favourite Matt Mason gadget as a kid, the Satellite Launch Pak shown below. 

The concept of domed satellite spinners has been around a while. Below is the PLANET PATROL SAUCER ray gun set with domed rotors that fly from the end of the gun and is from the 1950's. Is that an alien inside?

And finally here is the LUNAR ORBITOR by NP of Germany. Although it has no dome, the centre is topped with a neat silver radar. I don't know the date of this. There are many more examples of satellite toys with domes and thingies stuck on top. 

There are more space spinners.

These uber-cool Stanzel sets even contain a tiny domed figure.

Closer inspection on Ebay shows its an astronaut and not an alien.

But their spinner went plastic too and became a Ziroid!

To cap this post off here's a neat seated robot piloting the M-50 Space Ship.

Have you any spinning discs with aliens or robots in a dome readers?

Kevin's Scratch Robot Braman

Hi,

A quick scratchbuild, using one of the little wooden figures that I use for Camberwick Green characters. This is Brains' robot Braman.

Kevin

UK

AMERICAN FOLK ROBOTS

We stopped on the way out of town to visit the American Visionary Art Museum, a fancy name for folk art, that is, art by artists without a formal training.

Here is the exhibit MC readers might enjoy. A Robot Family. For size the red one on the left is about 6 feet tall.

Terranova47

USA

THE ROBOTS THAT KEEP ON GOING

Here are those Duracell robots that I own, that look a bit like your mystery toy one.

Kevin

UK

ROB'S BULLMARK MEMORIES

Woodsy,

I managed to find a few images of vintage 70s Bullmark diecasts on eBay, and if memory serves, I had some of these figures. 

I know I had a Diapolon, a Mekanda, a UFO Warrior, and of course, Mecha-Godzilla. What I could not find evidence of were two magnificent SF vehicles in the same line; one was a colorful air/spacecraft, which had swing-out wings ala Thunderbird 1. 

The other was a boxy white tank vehicle with missiles and all the usual SF nonsense. 

I wonder what anime show they were from? 

Anyways, fond memories. I liked the boxes as much as the toys inside!

Rob C

USA