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Title Image

Television Spaceman

  |   robots
PRODUCER
Alps

 

YEAR
1959
 
POWER
Battery
 
FUNCTIONS
Walking, moving arms, revolving screen and eyes, lighted mouth
 
RELATED ROBOTS
Alps Door Robot

Photo courtesy of toytent.com

The Alps Television Spaceman debuted in 1959, and was powered by two D-cell batteries. Its movements included walking forward with swinging arms, accompanied by rotating eyes and a kaleidoscopic light show within its “mouth” and revolving chest-mounted TV screen. The distinctive tin antenna serves not only as a visual hallmark but also as a functional switch.

 

Safety considerations prompted the replacement of the pointed tin antenna with a round plastic radar dish in later iterations. Despite these modifications, the essence of the original endured, influencing a generation of robot toys to come. Its legacy lives on not just in its physical form, but in the blueprint it laid down for other television-style robots that followed.