s so cute and so unusual. I had never seen anything like it. I didn’t even know they existed. I put the word out that I was looking for robots and started collecting voraciously.
If you give a kid a toy that allows him some control over his life, he’s never going to put the thing down.
My family’s always been into collecting. I had Hot Wheels from when I was a kid, so I started collecting those. I have vintage Art Deco microphones and Catalin radios and balloon-tire bicycles. I’ve collected so many things, but robots really took over. I was just nutty for them. I don’t know what clicked in me that made me crazy for them; maybe that they were automatons and were so cute.
It was pretty neat, the reaction that people had to them without really having any notion of what they were. Everybody just seems to respond to them for some reason. They’re so fun and unusual, and they’re so representative of an era. There have been incarnations of robots over and over again, in movies with R2-D2 from “Star Wars,” and so on.
Collectors Weekly: What is the typical reaction of non-collectors when they first see them?
Pinchot: Usually it’s just wonder. People say, “What is this?” Now that there’s sort of a general understanding of them, it’s not quite the same because people have seen them in commercials and elsewhere recently. But initially, back in the ’90s and early 2000s, most people really didn’t quite know what they were. They would want to play with them and see them work.
I have a battery-operated robot called X-70, but the collector name is “Tulip Head” because he’s got a big bullet-shaped head. He walks and then he stops, and his head opens like flower petals to reveal a rotating camera inside. Then it closes again, and he starts to walk. It’s fascinating to watch. I turn that robot on and people just lose their minds. Even if they don’t know anything about toys or robots, they’re fascinated. They can’t help but watch it because it’s so charming.
Every girl that I showed the robots to loved them. When they would come over and see all the items in my house, that’s the one thing they would gravitate toward. On my first date with my fiancée, she came over earlier than I expected. I still had to take a shower. I had a bunch of robots and a little neon clock on my desk. When I came out of the shower, she had positioned all the robots as if they were praying to the neon clock.
That’s when I fell in love with her. I was like, “Okay. That’s my kind of girl.” She didn’t really know anything about robots, but there she was, playing with them, enjoying them, and asking me all sorts of questions. She got them right away.
Collectors Weekly: You actually play with your robots?
Pinchot: Absolutely! I love to demonstrate them for my friends and visitors. My general attitude about collectibles and antiques is that if I can’t play with it or use it, then I don’t really want to have it. If I have to put it in a case or lock it away or not get enjoyment out of it, I don’t want it. I put batteries in them every couple of months and run them and play with them.
I take care of them, I keep them clean. I don’t let fingerprints build up on them because the acid in finger oils will etch them. So I don’t let them get degraded, but at the same time I definitely play with and enjoy them. That’s what they’re for.
If I have friends come over with their kid, I won’t necessarily let the kid play with a valuable vintage toy robot, but I’ll play with it with him, and show him how it works.
I used to keep a stock of reproduction robots that were cheap that I could give to child visitors. If a friend came over with his son, we’d play with the robots for a while, then I could hand him one to take home. It’s sometimes hard to relate to a 5-year-old, but if you’re playing with robots, all of a sudden you’re both in the same world.
Collectors Weekly: Are vintage toy robots a hot commodity now?
Pinchot: They have been since 1996, when a guy named Matt Wyse auctioned off his collection of robots at Sotheby’s. It was the first time any major auction house had really handled