User blog:Rammingspeed/Top 5 Worst-looking Robots in Series 9

Yeah, I'm back and I'm doing this again. People liked it last time, right?

Quite disappointingly, the lineup for Series 9 actually looks incredibly strong, with very few fodder robots to fill the gaps. I especially like the look of the new Foxic, Coyote (chainsaws like it's 1999) and Rapid - who else wants to see a robot hit the ceiling from that flipper?

But, there are some weaklings amongst the bunch, because of course there is. Let's kick things off shall we?

5. Jellyfish

What am I actually looking at here? I haven't been this confused since Portugal won the Euros.

It's a clamp, in every sense of the word, with no damaging capabilities. It looks like Huggy Bear from the original run of Battlebots on the most horrific acid trip in history. It's only this low/high on the list because it might actually be effective - until Aftershock rips it to pieces. Oh yeah, it's also 25kg underweight, so that's a thing. And one of the team members is a horse dentist? I reckon they were wired on horse tranquillisers while they were putting this thing together. The pit might be nicer than a ket-hole.

4. Heavy Metal

Again, what am I actually looking at? Am I the one on ketamine here? This was not what I expected when I heard about a new John Denny machine. It's not the fact that it looks bad, it just looks really ineffective. I applaud the creativity, but then again don't we do the same thing with 5 year olds after they finish a half-arsed lego car? Also, would you really put hold on renovations for your house just so you could enter Robot Wars? Priorities, what are those?

3.Frostbite

We've gone from "wtf" to "zzzz" very quickly. Forget Razer clones, Carbide clones are the new "cool" thing to do. That wasn't a pun because I'm not joking around here, I'm actually quite upset - this boring old box gets a spot but TR2 doesn't? Ok then. It's grey, it's underweight, it's cheaper than a package holiday to Skegness, what's not to love? It just looks like a discount Fluffy, and Fluffy was retired 13 years ago.

2. Trolley Rage

The obligatory "build it in your shed/back garden/sex dungeon" entry and my god does it look like it. And it's in a heat with Carbide? Mercy. Those sides look horribly flat, that axe looks horribly ineffective and its picture on the website is horribly... non-existent. Also, at 6mph it's slower than any of the house robots, so there's that too. God bless you BBC, always supporting us proletariat people (allegedly).

I can't lie, I love this thing. It's terrible, but it's a trolley. An angry trolley. In Robot Wars. It's every depiction of robot combat in sitcoms ever, and it's great. It's rubbish, but it's great.

1. Ms. Nightshade

You know when you look at something, and it's just so ridiculous that you don't even feel like commenting on it? I am feeling that. Ms. Nightshade makes me feel that. You've all seen it, it looks like a banned sex toy. But I dunno. What if it's actually an unbeatable machine? Who looked at Pussycat for the first time and thought "that's gonna be a runner up one day"? Who looked at Dr. Inferno Jr and thought "that's gonna win the competition"? Who looked at - oh wait, it's in Apollo's first round melee. Never mind. "Can't be flipped" - yeah, ok.