I still remember how to work it!
This was one of the coolest toys I had as a kid, but it seems like it has very nearly been lost to the sands of time. The Googles seemed to know very little about it, mostly because it does appear that there were quite a few toys after this one that used the same name.
The principle was very simple. You had a fairly powerful robotic arm that could manipulate objects, based on the commands of the two joysticks on the control panel. It shouldn’t have been as much fun as it was, but there was something hypnotic about it.
My parents must have spent a fortune on batteries for the thing; every Christmas, or Thanksgiving, or for any family gathering, I would haul out this toy, and people would gather around to see who could stack objects, or manipulate the various implements, or complete a challenge, in the least amount of time possible.
It was simple, but addictive; and yet, over the years, I’ve mentioned it to quite a number of people, and nobody had ever heard of it. If anyone would have, it surely must be the readers of AtomicToasters. In the days before video games were really mainstream, this was pretty high-tech stuff. Heck, I wouldn’t mind having a larger one now, so I can automate it, and make it a part of my Tony Stark-style laboratory/workshop.
Ooooooooo.
<img src="http://images.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/Little-Green-Men-toy-story-478711_1024_768.jpg" width="400">
Add me to the list of people who didn't know about this. It reminds me a bit of a helicopter toy I had. The chopper was attached to a base on a stiff wire and flew in circles. Two joysticks controlled altitude and direction.
My youngest son has that, he bought it at a garage sale. He really likes crashing into lego minifigures. I think there is a hook on the bottom that you are supposed to use to carry objects instead.
I see your Armatron and raise you a steam powered Armatron, courtesy of my friend I-Wei Huang, better known as Crabfu:
<img src="http://www.crabfu.com/steamtoys/steam_armatron/steamatron2.jpg" width="500">
From this page: http://www.crabfu.com/steamtoys/steam_armatron/
Part of this site: http://www.crabfu.com/steamtoys/
I now cannot wait to get home so I can see what that is… it's all blocked at work.
Wow. I'm in awe.
Now that I can see it… That. Is. Awesome.
Alco, the closest shopping joint to our house, had these next to the model rockets. It was damn pricey, and my parents could barely afford to buy me model rockets, but I still coveted Armatron. In retrospect, I am glad they invested in model rockets. I had a lot more fun blowing shit up than I probably could have "building stuff."
Do you know the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers?
It doesn't matter what the differences are, they both chose better degrees than me. Marketing?!? What was I thinking?!
<img src="http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/100000/00000/3000/400/103417/103417.strip.gif" border="0" alt="Dilbert.com" />
Liquor and Guessing!? I'm going into Marketing!
Dispite being the tender age of 23 I remember that toy. My familly didn't own it, I only got to play with it at reunions with our extended family. Between that toy, growing up with lots of big machinery on the farm and Transformers it turned me into the mechanical geek that I am today.
You can't begin to believe how excited I was to find out that my Porsche is actually Bumblebee's less famous brother Cliffjumper from the original generation one Transfomers series.
<img src="http://tfwiki.net/w2/images2/thumb/4/46/Cliffjumperg1.jpg/300px-Cliffjumperg1.jpg" width="600">
While never owning an "Armatron" I've sucked through a few cases of batteries enjoying my cousin's as a child. He always had the coolest toys. Like the Science Fair 50 in 1 Project Kit.
<img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1398/773052449_f4378e0250_z.jpg">
these things are still neat as an adult.
Haha…but, no.
Mechanical Engineers build weapons. Civil Engineers build targets.
Not mechanical engineers build cars while civil engineers build roads? The ying to the yang again.
Holy crap! I had an Armatron as a kid! I also remember when Radio Shack was the coolest store in town with the neatest toys.
I had a chemistry set, much magic smoke was made, also crystals, groovey! Instead of one of those 150 in 1 sets pictured, I had the family's cassette answering machine. It was fun too, until I let the magic smoke out. Actually that was fun too in an explosive way
<img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2310/2405558676_8829dcfbb6.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Screwball <img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2310/2405558676_8829dcfbb6.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Screwball Scramble" />
We have Tomy Screwball Scramble at home, that's what we pull-out to see who can do something the fastest at dinners. One time my friend came over and saw it and was incredibly excited. He said he had played it all the time with his brother as a kid. It was simply unbelievable to watch him, everyone was just entranced, the kids even more when the water filtration hukster came over with his vials and test tubes.
My neatest toy from Radio Shack when I was a kid was Galactic Man, which was the Radio Shack version of the Decpticon named Shockwave.<img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_p5rJTa7HHCM/SpcttMagfiI/AAAAAAAACGQ/0WTo-_3Wmbo/s666/DSCN0175.JPG" width="500">Click for more pictures. He came with really cool schematics for all the electronics and an exploded view of all his parts disassembled, so I pretended that I had the 'blueprints' to a real Decepticon!
I wanted an Armatron. I had a friend who got one.
By replacing the word Armatron (which I remember well) with words such as "SST Demolition Derby", "AFX slot cars", one of those bikes with shocks, and many other cool toys, you could describe a large part of my childhood.
Looking back, I recognize how cool it was to have a pedal car that my dad built, a bike that always had straight wheels and oil on the chain, camping gear we used all the time, a fairly large train set and a huge Meccano set that we had inherited.
Still, the grass is always greener…and I haven't stopped coveting the Armatron.
Your dad is who I aim to be.
So far, I have rebuilt the bicycle, repaired an old wooden train that I used to play with, and converted a no-name wooden-railway diesel engine into "Diesel with the pincher" by building an arm and a pincher for it.
Camping starts this summer.
<img src="http://www.thomasandfriends.com/Thomas/img/diesel10.jpg" width="500/">
Yeah, I try to be that way too. My dad did his undergrad in mech eng, so I like to think we're on the right track!
Hearing you say that gives me hope. I'm that guy, but my 12 YO just thinks I'm cheap.
I would imagine that goes with the territory. I was probably late teens at least before I started to catch on.
Last time we brought this up I spent a day or two trying to find this… <img src=http://www.theoldrobots.net/images23/armatron7.JPG> from http://www.theoldrobots.net/list12.html there was a website dedicated to it, but I can't find it now…