Vintage Friday: A Robot Dog from the 1960s!

This is a commercial for Gaylord the robot dog, a toy from Ideal in the 1960s.  It’s rather different from the robot dog toys we have today, isn’t it?

The song is kind of cute, but the dog is less than impressive.  Now, I totally believe that a toy that walked by itself like this was cool in the 1960s, but how do taking a step backwards and picking up something that’s placed directly in it’s path count as tricks?  And even the song admits that he “walks kind of lazy”.  I just have to wonder how long it took for this toy to get boring.  I mean, how long can you walk really slowly beside a robot dog or watch a robot dog walk really slowly before you have the urge to do something else?  I think I’m with that cat – off to find something else to do!

Droid: Do Robots Get Lost?

I found this ad for Droid cellphones in a men’s magazine and just had to post it.

I love this ad. It made me laugh.

Ok, so can you come up with one example from history of a man being not-lost because he has a robot?  Because I can’t.  I actually can’t come up with all that many people with robots from history (clearly this is a hole in our history that needs remedying so future people don’t have this dilemma).  I can think of hearing about space robots being lost several times, though, so that doesn’t speak well to robots and their not-being-lost powers.

That said, it’s a cute ad.  It does a great job of playing on the idea that robots make things better, or at least more interesting.  And really, it’s just a phone, not a robot in any way at all.  Still, making it sound like you’re buying a robot sounds like it’s way more fun than if it’s just another phone (which, realistically, it pretty much is, even with it’s GPS-like functionality).