Robotix Toys

If you grew up as a youngster in the 1980's like I did then you probably remember the building toy set from Milton Bradley called Robotix.

My childhood quest to get Robotix involved nothing less than a life or death situation. Okay, so it wasn't that extreme, but it did involve me being injured. I was in second grade at the time and playing outside during recess. I was under the big geodesic dome jungle gym thing and some annoying kid was chasing me. I turned and lunged right into the bar mouth first. Luckily all my teeth were still in my head, but my lip was split open badly. I remember running accross the playground. Salty blood filling my mouth and down my chin, tears blurring my vision, my head still whirling from the impact. I managed to make it to the teacher who rushed me to the nurse.

The school nurse couldn't do much but shove some gauze in my mouth and call my mom. I was waiting for my mother to arrive expecting her any minute when my uncle arrived instead. Now when you're a kid and you're injured you don't want to see your uncle, you want your "mommy." He sat with me and told me my mom was on the way and she sent him to wait with me. I was glad to not be alone but wanted some one closer to me than a relative I only see at christmas time. I was annoyed, especially when he started asking me the names of all the hot teachers who walked by. My mouth was full of gauze, I was bleeding, in pain, my lip was swollen to roughly the size of a buick and he wanted me to tell him the marital status of every skirt that passed by.

Luckily my mom arrived and she drove us to our family doctor, who attended the same church as we did. Being a nurse herself, she had inspected my lip and warned me that I may need stitches. I had never had to get stitches, but knew they invovled multiple needle pokes. Seeing I was scared she played on my desire for the Robotix toy as a bribe.

She said, "I have 50 dollars in my purse. If you are a good boy and let the doctor give you stitches on your lip, I'll take you to Kay Bee toystore and you can get that toy (Robotix) you're wanting." Oh my, that was the silver lining in my cloudy afternoon. So I was determined to be a little trooper and let them stitch my whole mouth shut entirely if it meant getting those Robotix.

As I mentioned we knew the doctor from church, he was a nice guy with a good bedside manner. So I felt like everything was gonna be okay even when he told me he also felt I needed some stitching up. I layed on my back as the nurse prepared the tray for the doctor. I saw very long needles, sissors, and other things that I didn't know what they were for, but they didn't exactly look friendly. My anxiety level started to climb, but I was remembering those Robotix. How the one piece looked like a dinosaur head. I tried to imagine building this robot (much larger in my imagination than it really was) that could become like my new best friend. My best friend with a dinosaur head. I was gonna hang in there and take whatever they had to throw at me.

The doctor was surprised at how collected I became. I kinda remember commenting on the deal my mom made with me. Probably trying to have another witness in case she folded on the deal. Unfortunately, I was the one who didn't keep up my end of the bargin. Just before the doctor was about to begin, he took out this big piece of napkin-like paper that had a hole in the center. He covered my face just leaving my mouth visible through the hole. I thought it was bad when I was looking at the things around me but not being able to see what was happening was much, much worse. That was all it took for me to lose it.

I was crying and squirming like a mad man. Though my lip was swollen larger than my whole head at this point, I somehow managed to suck the whole puffy thing into my mouth. The doctor couldn't get to the cut. My mom tried to calm me down. I tried to explain that I didn't want that thing over my face. But they didn't listen. As if he really needed that thing anyway. So after five or ten minutes of them trying to calm me down, and my mom reminding me of the glorious toy I'd be giving up if I didn't, they finally gave up. The doctor said he couldn't do it and said that it would probably heal fine on its own. They took that horrible death shroud off my face and let me sit up. I was relieved, but dissappointed. So much for the Robotix.

On the way home my mom still felt sorry for me so we went to the toy store. But she didn't get me the Robotix. I don't blame her for not getting it for me anyway. A deals a deal, and I blew it. Plus, Robotix was like fifty bucks and that was even more money back then. Instead I got something in the five dollar range. A small plastic skeleton of a Trex that you built and then had a wind up motor that made it walk. Very cool in itself, not quite Robotix, but I had a Trex friend to call my own. (At least until I lost all the tiny pieces like two days later.)