Fobot 200

Let us now take a moment to welcome the 200th Fobot into the world.  Meet “Harold Hill”.  Musical theatre fans will recognize him as the lead character in “The Music Man”.  Some of you have already started humming “76 Trombones”.  The truly nerdy have bypassed “76 Trombones” and “Trouble in River City” and have proceeded directly to “Shi-Poo-Pi”, a song for which there is no excuse.  But I digress…

Harold stands 19.5″ tall, from the car lens on the top of his toy coffee pot head, to his jello mold feet.  In between, there are clock gears, a rhinestone brooch, wrenches, a pocket watch movement, hydraulic fittings and valve springs.  And, of course, the Mattel Merry Music Box, with its charming and colorful graphics of a charming and colorful stereotypically ethnic Italian organ grinder and his monkey.  Many years ago, a child would hang this music box from a string around his/her neck, and turn a crank on the right side to play a tune until adults in the vicinity went mad and paid him/her to stop FOR GOD’S SAKE STOP!  In this case, the tune is “The Farmer in the Dell”.  Would have been better with “Shi-Poo-Pi”.

You won’t be seeing “Harold Hill” or many of his really cool brothers and sisters on www.ifobot.com.  In fact, you won’t see many available bots at all on the website.  Between saving bots to bring to the St. Louis Art Fair and filling reorders from galleries, fresh Fobots are in short supply.  And I know St. Louis is still 3 months away, but if I don’t start holding some Fobots back, we’re going to look pretty stupid standing there in an empty tent.