THE GREAT METAL HUMANOID LOOMED LARGE above the crowd of colonists, eyes aglow with nuclear fire, pistons pumping converted energy through a body borne of man's ingenuity. With lumbering steps, the mechanical man moved towards the rocket lying on its 18-wheeled gurney; in a mere five minutes, the spaceship would spike the sky as it traveled towards some unknown heaven.

With a gasp, the crowd watched as the robot picked up the vehicle as if it were merely a model, and then, with a gentleness that belied its size, placed the rocket on the launch pad. Stepping out of the ship's engine's blast zone, the robot took up position facing the onlookers. The screen on its chest blazed to life, displaying one of the images beaming back from the interstellar probe launched one week earlier. The pitted, crater-filled dust bowl that greeted the audience's collective eye was even more exciting for its bleakness, which served only to increase the sense of otherworldly magic inherent in any peak at a new world. "This was it," proclaimed the robot's view screen. This was outer space. And soon, the human masters would join their unmanned probes and, at long last, man would colonize the stars.

And while the Earthlings went about preparing for the moment that would change their race's destiny, the robot, powerful, wonderful, stood mute watch. Because within its positronic brain was a single, solitary message, routed through the solar system on the back end of the probe's image-signal: You are not alone. When the humans reach the stars, they will find us, and we will find you. And then your destiny will be fullfilled.

FOR KIDS GROWING UP IN THE 1950s -- a time period considered by many to be part of the golden age of science fiction -- robots were viewed as an inevitable product of future technologies. Of course robots would become part of day to day life - since Karel Capek first coined the term in his 1927 play, R.U.R. (Rossom's Universal Robots), the mechanical men had become part of the cultural lexicon. In the 1920s and Thirties, science fiction magazines included robots in many of their stories, and serialized films often featured mechanical men - mostly involved in an orgy of destruction. By the time the 1950s rolled around -- with Forbidden Planet's Robby the Robot and The Day the Earth Stood Still's Gort, among others -- any self-respecting kid could tell you that it was merely a matter of time before robots would become as common as Coca-Cola and baseball cards.

Don't think toy companies didn't know this. Seeing a popular market springing up before their very eyes, Japanese companies like Nomura, Yonezawa, and Yoshiya, and others -- often at the prompting of a post-WWII America looking to help Japan rebuild its war-torn economy -- began producing wind up and battery operated tin toy robots by the thousands. Suddenly, play time got a whole lot more interesting.

My own fascination with tin robots began about four years ago when a love of vintage science fiction ran headlong into a collector's obsession with toys. I started off slowly, picking up pieces as finances and opportunities presented themselves. I'm particularly attracted to the older toys (which, in some cases, enter my collection in the form of reproductions); I'm interested in how they reflect a past era's notions of technology and the future while drawing, aesthetically, on themes from their own respective times. For instance, early bots, like Lilliput Robot and Atomic Robot Man, look like mechanical men and play off atomic themes, while later examples -- Yoshiya's Atom Robot or Yonezawa's Mr. Atomic -- incorporate the notion of "mobile computers." Other toys, like Nomura's Zoomer and Radar robots, have as obvious reference points the cars and trains of the Fifties and Sixties (think about the front of a diesel locomotive or the hood of a classic automobile). Nomura's Piston Action Robby and Mechanized Robot, as well as Yoshiya's Planet Robot, pulled heavily -- and obviously -- from popular movies (in this case, Forbidden Planet). And toys like Asakusa's Thunder Robot and Alps' Television Spaceman were pure flights of fancy, indulgences of whimsy and fun (and just a little bit of violent chaos).

THE FIRST TIN TOY ROBOT that we know of, Lilliput, hit stores in the late Thirties (no one knows the exact date, though some collectors are getting close to an answer). But this boxy, yellow robot with a toothy grin and an inexplicable oxygen tube sold well enough for many to survive today.

The tin robot saga picks up again around 1949, in American-occupied Japan, when Atomic Robot Man first wobbled on to toy shelves. Still primitive in construction, but declaring, in its own way, the future of newly harnessed atomic energy, Atomic Robot Man was popular enough to warrant a second run in 1950, and who knows how many more after that. From here, toy robots took off, with a seemingly endless stream of shapes, colors, styles, movements, and lights parading across toy shelves. For kids of the Fifties and Sixties, it must have been heaven... until they started to get older, and their parents sold the toys at tag sales or, worse, threw them away.

Skip ahead a few decades. Those same kids are suddenly adults. Young at heart and with disposable income, they begin hunting down the toys of their youth. At first, the search is tough -- no self-respecting antique dealer actively displayed "junk" like toy robots. But these early pioneers, with the aid of a few brave toy dealers, did the best they could, often discovering fantastic pieces at rock bottom prices at garage sales and junk shops. Soon, however, as more and more people began to understand the buzz surrounding the burgeoning hobby, prices started to climb. Toys went to the highest bidders. In short, the hobby became popular, and as the scarcity of these toy robots became apparent, prices continued to climb.

Take, for instance, Masudaya's Machine Man. Standing 14 inches tall and painted a vibrant fire-engine red, this skirted robot -- so-called because of a body that flares out at the bottom -- sold in a 1998 auction for $74,000 dollars. At another auction in 2000, the Yonezawa Diamond Planet robot - a large, wedge-shaped red and blue wind up 'bot with googly eyes - commanded $35,000. Other toys range in price from the low hundreds to the tens of thousands.

(It should be noted that over the years, prices have fallen as those who can afford to bid prices into the stratosphere already have the toys they want. Still, many toys still command premium prices.)

Why all the fuss? You have to realize, these toys are people's memories. These are the toys they grew up with. Or, in many cases, these are the toys they couldn't have but desperately wanted; now that they've got the money, they'll be damned if they're going to let them go again.

But that doesn't explain the collectors who, like myself, got involved well after the toys were pulled from the shelves. Why does the hobby continue today with a new generation? For some, its the aesthetics -- certainly, this still drives the original collectors. These toy robots are cool looking. They represent fantastic design with exciting shapes, strong lines, and bold colors. Their tin construction is an anachronism today; as much as anything, this places them firmly in the past despite their futuristic vibe.

These toys also appeal on an intellectual level; they represent how the past saw the future, and looking at the robots, it's hard not to consider how we see the future today. Remember that the "future" of the Fifties was sometime around the year 2000; it's understandable that these toys thoughts about modern notions of design and aesthetics, technology, and society as a whole. Powerful stuff for a small piece of wind up tin.

I purposely held off on mentioning investment value when discussing the reasons people collect toy robots. While it's true that many people made a lot of money selling off their collections in the late Nineties, most people today purchase vintage tin toy robots for the sheer joy of it. The market is flaky, with previously pricey specimens selling for way less than expected. It's just not worth the risk going into the hobby with your eye on future dollar signs. Some people might disagree -- I say more power to them. And if they ever decide to sell (and you all know who you are), don't forget to send me an email first...

SO HERE WE ARE. Today there are many collectors of all economic levels, from CEOs of major corporations to people like myself, humble musicians with a much more limited line available cash. But the nice thing about collecting toy robots is that there's a price point at which anyone can enter the hobby. It's not cheap, by any means, but you don't have to sell off major body parts either. Nice deals can still be had on eBay if you're willing to put in the time to hunt them down. There's also a thriving reproduction market -- companies like Tin Tom Toys, Mike's Train House, and Osaka Tin Toy Institute have produced amazingly accurate reproductions of many past toys. While these robots don't have the pedigree of the originals, they are excellent toys in and of themselves, making them a nice entry point for new collectors as well as a way for experienced collectors to pick up pieces that might cost too much otherwise. Certain collectors have even taken to modifying toy robots, and these reproductions offer a perfect opportunity for the more technically-inclined of us to have a little fun. And finally, a few toy companies even put out brand new tin robots, continuing a long and storied tradition of toy manufacturing.

Enough of the history lesson. For more info, check out the links page. You'll find lots of resources, online stores, and other toy robot-oriented forums.