ROBOT aka HOOK ROBOT, MARUBISHI FOR WACO - JAPAN

A small 7.5" 18cm skirt robot. Blue lithographed tin friction robot. The robot advances with head turning from side to side. Complex litho of machinery. The mechanism is fairly straight-forward: friction-driven flywheel drives the toy with a moving head and swinging arms. The earliest confirmed sighting is in a newspaper ad for August 1963.

It is generally known as the Hook Robot because of an odd hook shaped antenna attached to the back of the head.

There are two major variations: light blue and dark blue. In addition the light blue has been seen with a red mouth and with a silver mouth.

Some boxes have a Marubishi logo sticker on top of the Waco importer logo.

It is interesting to note the strong resemblance between the Hook Robot and the Yoshiya skirted robots (Chief Robot Man etc) . Both share a very similar design but the connection between them remains a mystery. It was assumed that the Hook was an earlier robot, but this no longer seems to be the case.