Ten years ago, BattleBots was my life. Absolutely loved watching these fancy RC toys beat the snot out of each other every week. I got into the robot combat scene unfortunately late in the game, missing out on the first three seasons of Battlebots and the first four seasons of Robot Wars. But I was early enough to get in on the ground floor of the BattleBots McDonald's promotion. And I took this thing seriously - I went back to eating Kids' Meals and requested to look at the available toys before making my selection. I HAD to collect them all.
But it was not to be.
In a tragedy for the record books, I was unable to get all eight toys before the promotion ended. I wound up with six different toys, most of which had at least one duplicate. However, thanks to a garage sale and an eBay auction, I finally collected the full set in early 2011. Let's meet the bots!
This is the back of the display card, which tells employees which toy is which. Names are omitted, but every bot had a name, and seven of them were real-life robots seen on the show. All but one of the toys use pullback motors.
Toy 1: Overkill
This was the last toy I acquired. I got it from eBay, which is a great source for old fast food toys that's more expensive than yard sales but a lot more likely to have what you want. Actually, that applies to most yard sale items. ANYWAY, Overkill was a heavyweight-class robot with a weapon that was complete shit for damaging stuff as intended, but was really, really good at jamming up spinning weapons. Overkill never lost a fight from being knocked out, partly because every spinner that fought him always got their blade bent when it hit the big stupid knife.
Both Overkill and the next toy move their weapon up and down when they move forward.
Toy 2: Tentomushi
The other toy I did not get during the initial promotion, Tentomushi was found at a yard sale around 2006 or so. Tentomushi was a really original robot that used the top lid of a plastic sandbox to try and smother opponents. In later seasons the other robots got too fast and powerful for this to work, but Tentomushi kept trying right up until the last season.
Tentomushi is also known for going overseas to compete in a Robot Wars middleweights match, wherein he defeated Shunt by disabling his aerial with the smother.
Toy 3: Mechadon
Here's the sole wind-up toy of the group, and a robot you may recognize from its' cameo appearance in ZFRP last year. Mechadon was an awesome BattleBot in terms of looks, but sucked in terms of combat. He was one of my favorites. I loved his design and his name. Sadly, his toy is nowhere near as cool, colored a silly-looking purple and without movable segments. His legs wiggle feebly when he's wound up, the real forward motion being provided by wheels on his underside. The slowest of the toys.
Toy 4: Ginsu
This was the first toy I got, and I didn't recognize him at all. Ginsu was a robot from the early days of the show that used sawblades for wheels. While saws make for cool-looking wheels, they don't make for effective wheels, and Ginsu spent most of his time trying to figure out how to turn. His toy fares better, and is able to run on four of its' six sides.
The real Ginsu did not have those red wheels - those are used on the toy to show you the proper orientation for it. The red wheels should be top front.
Toy 5: Diesector
I love this one, both on the show and in toy form. Diesector had a great name, a skilled driver, fantastic strategy, neat weapons and an awesome victory dance. No wonder he was a two-time superheavyweight champion.
Toy 6: Ankle Biter
Ankle Biter wasn't too successful on the show, but he had a fun name and made for a simple but fun toy with a very strong pullback motor and a weapon - a wedge - that actually worked to defeat some of the other toys, particularly number 7. Diesector's my favorite, but this guy takes second.
Toy 7: Mac Attack
ORIGINAL BATTLEBOT DO NOT STEAL. While I like McDonald's enthusiasm for the promotion being so high that they made their own fighting robot, this thing is definitely the shittiest toy of the lot. First, its' "weapons" - the two patties - don't even extend past the body. Second, this toy is very easy to tip over. It can't win a toy fight to save its plastic life. So of course by the time the promotion was over I had like five of these fucking things.
I once tried to destroy one on purpose. I seriously abused it (including slamming it into walls with a much larger toy and actually going outside and hurling it at my driveway as hard as I could), but it just would not break. These toys were incredibly well-made for fast-food freebies - as long as you didn't break the pullback motor by forcing it to wind up too much, they'll last years and years.
Toy 8: BioHazard
The biohazard symbol looks less like a biohazard symbol and more like a stylized insect head, but whatever. Perhaps this is the same sort of biohazard-fear that caused the retail version of BioHazard to be named "Heavyweight Champion" on the packaging. That confused me as a kid - I got a "Heavyweight Champion" toy before I saw BioHazard on TV, and I thought the robot was literally named "Heavyweight Champion", like the builders were so smugly certain their bot would win the division that they actually named it that. Then after I saw BioHazard on TV I thought "Heavyweight Champion" was a ripoff parody bot.
Christ, I was dumb.
Oh right, the toy. BioHazard's toys were frequently inaccurate because his extremely flat design was so hard to replicate. Here, he gets a boost in height because the internal parts wouldn't fit in a properly-sized BioHazard (The retail toy had a large, conspicuous lump where the friction motor went). This toy's got a unique action feature none of the other toys share - BioHazard will turn every so often instead of just going straight, courtesy of a moving peg in his base. Probably my third favorite of the line.
Here's Overkill's detailed and insightful instruction sheet, available in over 200 languages.
I never realized it before, but apparently I have one of those battlebot toys! I had a box of cars when I was little, and Diesector was in them. I don't know if I still have it somewhere, but I remember fiddling with those yellow front thingys and the black side thingys...
ReplyDeleteI remember watching Battlebots. Biohazard was a fun one to watch, especially when he fought Vlad for the championship.
ReplyDeleteWhy they didn't make a Vlad Happy Meal toy is beyond me. Biohazard's toy looks more like Vlad.