User blog:NJGW/My Sister's 10 Favourite Really Bad Robots

All written by my sister, of course.

Honourable Mentions:

Armadrillo: I really don’t know why. The mediocre armour, maybe? The fact it’s in S3’s series 6 melee?

Tartarus: I don’t know what it’s supposed to be, even when it’s explained, but it’s perfect regardless.

Angel of Death: It’s a purple wedge with that name. Plus, its series 2 heat is ridiculously poor but hilarious precisely for that reason.

Wedgehog: The JP commentary in the Dreadnaut (THE PIECE OF CHEESE) and Robot the Bruce (HAHA HA HA HA) battles. It also has a nice texture to its armour. Truly in-depth reasons. Death Trak: I genuinely like it and I don’t know why. It looks nice, I guess, and it looks like it has eyes and a mouth, like Apollo does. That’s the last time those two are ever getting compared.

The Blob: Again, JP commentary (IT’S OH NO WOE THE BIG HEEEEEAAAAVE HO) and the fact that it’s such a massive pile of crap that I have to love it. I think. Jabber: One of the worst reasons here, but I kept forgetting about its existence in series 7 Sporcle quizzes and then I grew fond of it for that reason and the fact that its pathetic and just gets carried around by Mantis for ages. Plus you can make jokes about Bulldog Breed’s entanglement being used for fear of the mighty Jabber and joke that it inspired Carbide and Tombstone, pioneering the horizontal bar spinner craze.

10: Ms. Nightshade
I love Apollo and its Series 9 heat in general, and one of my favourite parts was Ms Nightshade flailing about. It’s actually somewhat aesthetically pleasing, and it’s always nice to see a team try something new. Sure, it didn’t really move, but I’d still rather have something like Ms Nightshade than some of the other mediocre-as-well-as-boring robots like Rusty. I’m not sure as to how successful it was in getting women into STEM but I love it regardless.

9. Xenomorph
This one’s purely because one morning I was watching a rerun of Series 7, Heat O and jokingly said that Xenomorph’s underrated, which then became a running joke. A purely one-sided joke, but I found it funny. It’s such a slow, generic robot but I like it purely because it’s so unremarkable. It’s a bit like Jabber in that I always forgot it in those quizzes, but then grew to like it because it’s so forgettable.

8. Red Dragon
Another one in because of a long-running joke (there’s a theme here). I used to joke that Series 3 fanboys somehow think battles like Red Dragon vs Raizer-Blade are up there with the greatest in Robot Wars history, with that being my example purely because it was the first bad first round battle I thought of. In general, though, I’ve always liked dragons and when I first saw Red Dragon when rewatching series 3 I thought it looked cool. Since then I’ve realised it’s really not (does it even have a face?) but for series 3 it’s probably a masterpiece.

7. Crasha Gnasha
This one’s shameful. I actually one day said something along the lines of “I like Crasha Gnasha’s design” and I was never allowed to live it down. I mean, it’s better than Shark Attack, but I can’t tell whether its poor-but-endearing design is what makes me like it or the way it gets flipped by Firestorm. Its mouth seems to open like it’s screaming and it just sort of flops down. It’s perfect.

6. Full Metal Anorak
Full Metal Anorak was the reverse of the other robots, in that I grew to like it because I remembered it for some random reason, like how I also remembered Enzyme in series 2 amongst a sea of bad, unremarkable robots. No, Enzyme will not be in this list. I love Series 1 in general, but the reason why Full Metal Anorak is on this list and Enzyme isn’t is because a) it wasn’t in Series 2, Heat K and b) it actually wasn’t awful. Sure, I like some awful robots in spite of their inability to do anything (that’s the purpose of this list, after all) but Full Metal Anorak wasn’t the worst robot in series 1 by quite a considerable amount.

5. Cygnus X-1
Like Full Metal Anorak, Cygnus isn’t awful—it’s mediocre at best, but I like it. Atomic’s my second favourite robot, so it’s got its melee in its favour, but why, I hear you ask, Cygnus X-1and not something more respectable that also fought Atomic? Well, Cygnus had a cool name. Second, it may be a very generic flipper, but it stood out to me, perhaps because of the nice colour scheme? I really don’t know, but what I do know is that I like it. Its one of those very average series 7 robots that just appeal to me for some reason.

4. Hammer & Tong
When I first rewatched series 4 I decided I really liked robots covered in polycarb. That’s about it. It’s slow, fat (the appropriate term is thicc, actually; I won’t body-shame Hammer & Tong) and its weapon is near useless, but I liked it for its polycarb and its cool wheels. So there you go.

3. Demon Duck
Ducks are my favourite animals and I used to collect loads of duck-themed things, so forgive me for liking a duck-themed robot. But that’s not all: Demon Duck is an easy robot to make spinner-killer jokes about, made even funnier by the fact that its armour was absolutely shocking. I did genuinely like the theme, though. The eyes, the beak being the wedge: it’s actually a good novelty bot. Plus, the superheavyweight rumble is honestly one of the funniest battles to exist, and its name being “Demon Duck” is great when you consider that it was literally a wedge. Very demonic.

2. Revolution 2
Now, Revolution 2 isn’t the worst robot on this list by a long shot, but it isn’t a good robot either. However, when rewatching series 6 for the first time, I unironically loved Revolution 2. I still do, mainly because of its design. Its weapon is relatively poor (though I rate it more than most people do which isn’t saying much), but it’s such an ambitious design that I really like it. It’s so different, and considering that around Extreme 2 and Series 7 we got a lot of mediocre invertible spinners riding off Disc-O-Inferno, Supernova and Fluffy’s successes, Revolution felt genuinely different. Its Extreme 2 design is honestly so aesthetically pleasing. Anyway, imagine my response when, before rewatching Series 7, I found out there was a Revolution 3, and that it had a drum. I thought, hey, maybe Revolution will finally have sorted out its problems and prove its haters wrong! Long story short, Revolution 3 took the ambition of Revolution 2 and scaled it down into a box-sized atrocity and then added a drum. It’s such a boring robot in comparison—and I don’t even usually mind box robots—and it’s still unreliable and its weapon still underwhelms. So while I can forgive Revolution 2 for those purely because a) it tried a new idea which didn’t necessarily pay off and b) it looks nice, I can’t forgive Revolution 3 for those. TL;DR: I like Revolution 2 because it’s shiny.

1. Eubank The Mouse
How do I explain my love for The Mouse? It’s a joke bot, but I love it. The way it just crashes at the beginning of the heat, the way its arms just swing wildly all over the place, its stupid face, the way it keeps popping up in the background in the pits in series 2—all such… let’s say ‘valid’ reasons for liking a robot. However, the most valid of all the reasons is that one of my favourite moments, both regarding JP and Robot Wars in general, is when JP announced that The Mouse had IRREPERABLY BROKEN DOWN. These levels of let’s-pretend-this-is-a-massive-shock-when-really-it’s-been-pre-prepared were so great, and even moments like Terrorhurtz in Series 7 with a similar reaction can’t match this. It’s just another Series 1 robot that I like mainly because it’s so hilarious but I actually really like it. It’s very basic, but its design is actually good for a novelty bot—it goes the way of Robochicken in terms of aesthetic appeal rather than the Killerkat method of “haha guys wouldn’t it be funny if we made a generic invertible spinner but put fur on it lmao this is what the kids want isn’t it”. I’m probably giving The Mouse far too much credit there by comparing it to Robochicken but I’m a dedicated stan of good ol’ Eubank for life.