Thunderpants

"To be honest, this has been utter pants in previous wars"

- Jonathan Pearce introduces Thunderpants before realising that it's not moving

Thunderpants (also spelt thUnderpants) was a low invertible box-shaped robot armed with a sledgehammer that entered Series 7 of Robot Wars, it was the final Robot Wars entry from Team Panda, and was singularly built and operated by Pete Collier. The robot never featured on the televised show (it was seen briefly, but merely concealed in shadow) as its drive belts had broken beyond repair before its first battle in Heat E after the robot's wheels had been damaged by King B Powerworks in its qualifying match for the series, Thunderpants lost this battle, but was awarded a discretionary place in the main competition. An interview with Pete Collier was filmed, but was not shown on the televised show. As the interview was not televised, neither were the statistics shown on the televised show, little is known about the robot.

Team Panda had already had several robots in the past, such as Panda Monium, More Panda Monium, Big Pants, Hot Pants and the antweight Pants. However, none of these machines had much success at all, Thunderpants was certainly promising, but in a very unfortunate way, it didn't deliver.

The robot was named after the film of the same name due to the fact that Pete Collier's two daughters Ammile and Megan being big fans.

Series 7
In Heat E, Thunderpants was due to fight Leveler 2, Tetanus Booster and Barber-Ous 2'n a Bit in its first round melee for the Seventh Wars, however it didn't make it out of the the starting gates due to damage to its drive belts. Thunderpants was given the red card by Refbot and automatically eliminated from the competition before activate was sounded. "As I drove Thunderpants forward there was a lurch and then nothing!! I could hear nothing either. They opened the gates and hauled her back. Both drive belts had come off!!! This had never happened before. On later analysis we realised that the damage to the wheel supports from King B3 had twisted the wheels so they were no longer straight. Under load the belts went! Derek [Foxwell] gave us a few minutes to try to get them back on but to no avail. We were out in the worst possible style!"

- Team Panda website The melee continued as the remaining three robots went into battle. "So only three remain after the wonderful, wonderful competitive spirit from Thunderpants"

- Jonathan Pearce as activate is sounded

Results

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Wins/Losses

 * Wins: 0
 * Losses: 1

Series Record

 * Series 1: Did not enter
 * Series 2: Entered with Panda Monium
 * Series 3: Failed to qualify with More Panda Monium
 * Series 4: Failed to qualify with Big Pants and More Panda Monium
 * Series 5: Did not enter
 * Series 6: Entered with Hot Pants
 * Series 7: Heat, Round 1