Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Mr. Machine Retro Robot


Mr. Machine Retro Robot


Vintage 1960s Robot
Owned by Humanoido

From Wikipedia: Mr. Machine is a once popular children's mechanical toy originally manufactured by the Ideal Toy Company in 1960. Mr. Machine was a robot-like mechanical man wearing a top hat.

The body had a giant windup key at the back. When the toy was wound up it would "walk", swinging its arms and repeatedly ringing a bell mounted on its front; and after every few steps emit a mechanical "Ah!", as if it were speaking.

The toy stood about 18 inches tall (roughly 46 cm). The gimmick of Mr. Machine was that one could not only see all of his mechanical "innards" through his clear plastic body, but one could also take the toy apart and put it back together, over and over, like a Lego toy or a jigsaw puzzle.

Humanoido received a Mr. Machine at Christmas time when it first appeared in 1960. The walking see through robot had many gears and once disassembled it was very challenging to reassemble the gears based on the drawings. Many people took apart their Mr. Machine and were unable to assemble it. Parents had no clue and in one case, the parts were taken to a rocket scientist who was unable to reassemble it. Generally the only robots surviving were those never taken apart.

TV Commercial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgIm1mJCyRU