the original, but when you stand them side by side, there are obvious differences: The eyes on the repro are embossed rather than concave; the body is a little bit too narrow; the arms are attached a little bit differently. If you don’t have them side-by-side, it can be dificult to tell the difference.
I highly recommend that anyone who wants to start collecting get as many reference books and old auction catalogs as they can before they buying their first piece. They should talk to as many other collectors who are into the hobby as they can.
Most of the people who I got started on robots and space toys did a lot of conferencing before they ever bought their first piece. I did a lot of educating as a dealer—that’s your job. It’s important to educate your buying public so that they know what they’re looking at. The goal is to help them make smart decisions and be happy. It’s all about research, research, research.
Collectors Weekly: Have computers supplanted Rosie the Robot?
Pinchot: The computer, I think, has killed off a lot of things. When I was a kid, I had to go to the library to get information. Now, at 2:00 am, if I need information, I just go online. It’s all there. That’s a good thing and a bad thing. But yes, the computer has killed the idea of the robot because, really, the computer is the robot, and just like a toy robot, we are controlling it. It’s not fantasy anymore. It really is a robot.
This is what killed rockets and space toys. Once we actually went into space, the fantasy aspect was gone—toys started to reflect reality. You had Apollo, Gemini, and all these rockets that had gone into space. Fantasy was pushed aside, but fantasy is a big issue for kids. If you allow them to fantasize, they’re going to have a great time. That’s the definition of play.
But I think the pendulum will swing the other way again, eventually. You’ll get computerized robots. Suddenly, once again, you’ll have kids who can be in control of a robot toy.
Collectors Weekly: So with all this technology at our fingertips, why do people still place a value on robot toys?
Pinchot: Things are so fast forward now. I was in the car the other night with a buddy. My GPS wasn’t working. He said, “Well, let me get on my phone.” I said, “What? You have GPS on your phone?” Obviously, I’m kind of a techno dud, behind the times. It took me forever to get a cell phone. Same with the computer; I didn’t get one until ’98.
One of the reasons why collectibles are so hot is a reaction to future shock. It scares me. It gets me a little apprehensive thinking that technology has run away from us, and, as a result, we get terrible things like the oil spill in the Gulf. These sorts of events are the byproducts and downsides of modern technology. What vintage toy robots and space toys do is remind us there was a much simpler time when things weren’t quite so advanced and quite so scary.
Look at the progress of the last hundred years: Up until then, for the 2,000 years preceding them, things were pretty much the same. In the last hundred years, though, we got electric wristwatches and clocks, fossil fuel and cars, rockets going into space. All of these things came about in the last hundred years. That’s a lot of progress in a very short period of time.
Now people are talking about cryogenics—freezing people and bringing them back to life once there’s a cure for their disease—and about irradiating and “engineering” food. Those things scare me, but they’re also interesting, pushing things forward.
Any kind of vintage collectible reminds us of a simpler time, when things were a little bit easier to digest. Now things are so complicated and so far advanced that it’s a little bit unnerving. Just when you start to get a handle on computers, there’s a Kindle or an iPad. I can barely keep up on technology; it’s fast-forward all the time. But when I look at a vintage toy robot, I think, “it’s so simple,” and it calms me down.
(All photographs courtesy Justin Pinchot)