Roboto stops for a coffee break in "Happy Birthday Roboto."
Roboto stops for a coffee break in "Happy Birthday Roboto."

Episode 68: Happy Birthday Roboto

“His heart is human, his blood is boiling, his brain is IBM.” We can’t confirm that the theatrical 70s rock powerhouse, Styx, was singing about a new Master of the Universe, but if the servo fits … for we too are meeting a noble robot who faces a great trial.

We’re talking about Roboto, who – with his see-through torso and colorful cogs – ranked among the best in the MOTU toy line. Thanks to erratic syndication scheduling, many of us probably missed Roboto’s origin story, but now we have a chance to learn how Eternia’s own mechanical knight came online.

In this actually pretty harrowing tale, the heroic warriors embrace Roboto as a friend, but the demented Modulok reprograms our computerized ally to carry out his wicked errands, and even devises an experiment to transfer Duncan’s brain into a monstrous spare head! It’s absurd, it’s terrifying, it’s hilarious – join us as we debate birthday party programming and boot up our review of this week’s episode of “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.”

Show Notes:

0:00:00 – Episode Start
0:00:28 – Introductions
0:00:49 – Show Setup
0:02:07 – Birthday Programming
0:12:16 – Act One
0:12:35 – Our New Toy
0:14:09 – The Pilot
0:15:46 – Duncan Repairs
0:16:21 – Lab Guard
0:17:25 – Eternian Lowe’s MVP
0:20:18 – Act Two
0:20:28 – The Lab
0:21:29 – Meet Our Ro-butt
0:22:11 – Scanning Lifeforms
0:23:12 – An Observor
0:25:03 – Coffee Disruption
0:25:58 – Take Drone for a Spin
0:27:13 – Act Three
0:27:48 – In Modulok’s Lab
0:28:58 – The Evil Plan
0:30:05 – Toy Chew
0:32:27 – Roboto, Arise!
0:33:53 – Reprogrammed with Praise Programming
0:34:58 – The Birthday
0:36:04 – The Unending Moral
0:36:35 – Ratings
0:38:47 – Closing Thoughts
0:40:21 – Episode End