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Magic Robot

Educational quiz game with mystifying artificial intelligence

Magic Robot“Ask the robot questions,” said the box. “He always gives the right answer.” We must say, we were intrigued from the start. The robot in question was under two inches high, made of solid metal, and stood in a strange “knees bent” posture that made him look to be in desperate need of a toilet1.

He held in his hands a long metal pole, and could be fitted into one of two holes inside his box, while around these holes, sheets with one circle of printed questions and one circle of printed answers could be placed. The first stage was to place the robot in the “questions” hole, and point his pointy stick at the challenge of your choice, such as “What is the capital of France?”2

Then you could in theory try to “beat the robot” by answering the question yourself but, let’s face it, most of us skipped straight to stage three: watching the robot Do His Thing. You simply placed him on the “answers” hole (strangely enough, it was a mirror), and - whoa! - he spun around of his own accord, and - bingo! - his stick would be pointing at the correct response. Bloody hell. He’s only a piece of metal - how could he KNOW?!?!

Socks were well and truly knocked off. The only downside was that there weren’t all that many questions per box, so after a couple of rainy afternoons, you would be reduced to seeking amusement from illegally swapping around the question and answer disks. “What is the capital of France?” “The banana.” Ho ho. But for a while at least, this was a toy with a genuine wow factor, at least when you’re seven or under. Retrospect may tell us that it was all done with magnets, but hey, get Derren Brown to go one-on-one with this geezer live on Channel 4 and we’ll be there.

1The version manufactured by Merit was actually a Marvin The Paranoid Android lookalike in green plastic with a metal base but, heck, the memory cheats. A carbon copy competitor, from Bell toys, was the unfortunately racist Dr Magini. One might most kindly say he resembled that Zoltar Speaks wishing machine from the film Big. In actual fact, he’d clearly been designed - we can fairly confidently say - as a plastic Black-a-moor.

2The questions, boasted Merit, were authorised by The Children’s Encyclopedia. No, we don’t recall this being the definitive source of childhood knowledge either. If they’d been authorised by the McWhirters off of Record Breakers, we might be talking.



Posted on January 17, 2006 by Registered CommenterSteve in , | Comments13 Comments

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Reader Comments (13)

Thi was one game that never changed its format or boox from the 50's until the 80's -quite unusual as most had slightly different designs after a while.
Jan 17, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterPaul Jones
My cousins had one of these & claimed once that my Grandad had noticed one of the answers were wrong, but I can't remember which one. I sure I read somewhere about a verison with a Dalek, made in the mid 1960s.
Jan 18, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterRichard Davies
I remember stories of a Dalek version of this game but never saw one.A mint copy is probably worth an amazing amount now. on the subjecy of Daleks, one of my mates inherited a Dalek board game from his older brother.The dalek pieces were quite good and I think it was influenced by the 60's Dalek comic strip (the one with gold Daleks and wher the pre Davros leader was a Dalek with a huge round head.
Jan 19, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterPaul Jones
Sounds like War Of The Daleks, which will be getting its own entry soon.
Jan 19, 2006 | Registered CommenterSteve
The Dalek version was called The Dalek Oracle, according to Dr Who: The Sixties.
Apr 11, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterRichard Davies
I spent hours round my best friends house, playing wth this, not because we wanted to know the answers, but beause we were fascinated by how it worked! Even now, I'd love to know how it worked...probably magnets, like you said. But gosh, it was intriguing, and a little bit scary...what would happen if the little robot ever left the board knowing everything! Oh..and the version I remember had a little metal knight with a sword that pointed to a right answer, but I could be misremembering
Jul 9, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterMichelle
I offered my Magic Robot up on Swap Shop, asking for 'a urethane skateboard'. Hopelessly optimistic, I realised even at the time, probably, but I was desperate. My skateboard was ply, no kick-tail, with rubber wheels and not proper trucks.
Jul 9, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterRobin Lovell
I had a version with a china man (Confucius). Can anyone else rmeber this version and what it was called?
Sep 8, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterDot Kew
I have just found one of these and it has a seventies metallic robot and the font on the box is Mos Isley in all its seventiesness but the gragphics and design of the game ia as pictured above.
Oct 16, 2008 | Unregistered Commenterjeremy
I still have mine. A generation before the illustrated version, and the robot still has his pointer!
Oct 24, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterRoger O
Dot Kew said, "I had a version with a china man (Confucius). Can anyone else rmeber this version and what it was called?"

We had the Confucius version too, though I don't have a clue what it was called.
Jan 10, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterWendigo
I had one of these - and soon knew all the answers by heart - but thought it was just a game till I entered a general knowledge quiz when I was camping and won. I was astonished and felt I had cheated as all the questions came from The Magic Robot!
Jun 3, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterchristine
My mum got really excited when she spotted one of her childhood toys in a second hand shop and got it there and then. I was intregued for about a day, then it got a bit samey.
Aug 12, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterStephen Morgan

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