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12 Electronic Toy Robots of the 1980s

July 11th, 2011 by Benj Edwards

12 Electronic Toy Robots of the 1980s on PCMag.com

Gather ’round the fire, kids, and let me tell you about some cool robotic toys from the 1980s. On second thought, just look at this slideshow instead.



This entry was posted on Monday, July 11th, 2011 at 10:18 am and is filed under Electronic Toys, NES / Famicom, Retrogaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

8 Responses to “12 Electronic Toy Robots of the 1980s”

  1. Jim U. Says:
    July 11th, 2011 at 4:26 pm

    I had a couple of those Tomy robots as a kid including Dustbot!

  2. Chris Says:
    July 12th, 2011 at 9:56 am

    I instantly recognized the Big Trak. My father must have bought it for himself – he had way more fun programming it than I did.

  3. Xyzzy Says:
    July 12th, 2011 at 7:15 pm

    We didn’t have any of the ones you mentioned, but I’d forgotten that my brother had Casey, basically a robot version of Teddy Ruxpin (I think for younger kids):
    http://www.theoldrobots.com/smallbot29.html
    (He didn’t care about the book/story tapes, but loved to make it lip-sync to MC Hammer.)

  4. Justin Says:
    July 12th, 2011 at 7:27 pm

    You left out my favorite: Robie Jr. from Radio Shack. Here’s an article about my Robie: http://www.retroist.com/2011/04/25/retro-toys-then-and-now-robie-junior/

  5. Alexander Says:
    July 13th, 2011 at 1:29 am

    I had a Super Armatron sometime in the mid 90s. That thing ruled. It stripped a few gears, bu otherwise, it’s still all in once piece, if I recall correctly.

  6. Edward Says:
    July 15th, 2011 at 2:55 pm

    Seeing the Big Trak slide reminded me of a toy car I had in the early to mid seventies that was ‘programmable’. It included a selection of ~6″ long cards that were inserted into the back of the car that made it drive forward, turn, stop and back up etc. A motor in the car pulled the shaped card through which changed the steering and stop/start motion. There also was blank cards you could cut with a scissors to make your own ‘program’. Does anyone remember this and if so what was it’s name etc? Haven’t thought of this for 40+ years but the Big Trak jogged a long dormant memory…

  7. Player1 Says:
    July 18th, 2011 at 7:31 am

    Good times. My parents had to (…) buy me an Armatron and were not pleased with the results, because this thing was really loud. I still have it somewhere. Need to look for it.

  8. Sina Erem Says:
    November 30th, 2012 at 7:56 am

    I also had the toy car guided by the variable width card, when I as a kid. (70’s). One side of the card regulated the forward, neutral, backward shift. The other side regulated steering. I can’t remember the brand nor can I find anything resembling it on the net. It might have been a red VW beetle by Hasbro but I am not sure. This car was a simple analog computer, so to say.

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