Last year seemed to be a big year for robot wars on TV. You pretty much couldn’t turn on the tube without seeing some jury-rigged stainless steel box whacking another one with a pneumatic axe. At the peak, I think there were three different shows, all with pretty much the same format. Plus other shows aimed at the tinkerer at heart, e.g. Full Metal Challenge, Junkyard Wars, and so on.
This year…nothing but Trading Spaces and various clones. Unless you count Monster House which is just Trading Spaces with a touch of Junkyard Wars thrown in.
So where did all the robots go? Were the shows too expensive? Did they oversaturate the market and bomb in the ratings? I’d think that there’d be at least one show remaining.
I think interest died down alot when people begun to realize that the most succesfull type of battle robot was also the most boring. I believe it was called a “wedge” and was basically just a ramp that would try to get under the other robot to flip it over.
“Robot Wars” is or at least was on Tech TV (British show hosted by Craig “Lister” Charles). The one that dominated was a flipper 'bot (NOT a simple wedge) that managed to flip two of its competitors out of the arena (and managed to flip a house robot) (!)
I miss “Operation Junkyard” which was akids version of Junkyard wars that showed sat mornings on NBC last season.
Addendum: A common TV situatuion
1)Station A comes up with a cool idea which meets sucess
2)Stations B-Z copy said idea, usually poorly
3)Public gets sick of idea (which they wouldn’t have if only station a had it)
4) rations drop so stations A-Z drop idea
Yeah, what is the deal with this show? It seems like what they do every episode is take a bland, boring, average home and turn it into a total piece of shit.
The robots have all boarded their Great Space Armada and blasted off to scour the stars for the race which attacked Earth. Little do they know that the almost legendary Last War, during which Man became extinct, was not the result of alien treachery…
