W is for Wind-up Wobots

As Walter would have said . . . no, not me; Walter the wobot! And don't mess with his boss - he is the law!

We looked at one of these ages ago which I found in the attic here, a left-over stocking-filler gift from Christmases' past, and there is currently a set of figures doing the rounds with these mechanisms, a Guardsman (also seen here), a Spanish Gendarmerie (presumably - like 'our' Guardsman - also aiming at a tourist market), while in the 'States they have a pair of protagonists from their Civil War, in blue and grey.

The wonderfully wonderful Wonderful! 12 to a box, four each of three designs, there was only one original left in the box, so the rest are obviously part of a nascent collection, and as they are all pretty-much the same thing, blurb will be a bit thin after the first one!

This is the Wonderful chap/chapess (probably what is now called a phantom-brand) and while it's easy to say these are trying to be C3PO, most of them pre-date the original movie (I know the attic one does), what they were trying to be was smaller, cheaper versions of the all-singing, all-dancing, whistles, buzzer & bells, lights flashing, battery-operated robots in tin-plate and plastic coming out of Japan and Hong Kong at the same time.

This and the next one have a completely different mechanism for locomotion, hitching or hoicking themselves along with alternate steps, made as the two, long, too-long arms pass the base, helped by near-flush carpet-wheels. Looks like a juke-box!

'Jukebox's brother is some kind of 1950's labour-saving kitchen device (electric coffee grinder?) from the wish-list pages of Woman & Home!

Universal (who would be buying the remains of Matchbox around the same time) are responsible for the last two, apart from the next one, the others are unmarked.

This chrome-plated chap is a bit later (1979 - Tomy) and is it based on the Lost in Space or Black Hole movie robot? Geoffrey Peeters recently showed another here (link) and these would make a nice mini-collecting theme if you are short of space and/or budget, as they turn up pretty constantly, there are dozens of them if not hundreds (depending on where you draw the line) and they are usually affordable, but their mechanisms have often been damaged with over-winding, rust or gritty dirt/dust.

If you cast your net beyond robots, you will find all sorts of figural subjects, monsters, Easter-chicks, eggs, Christmas novelties, cartoon characters; and these dinosaurs, which are quite recent, if not current. There is a similar jumping or hopping mechanism with similar subjects. Many thanks to Adrian Little for letting me shoot these.