A little background before we roll film. During those early awkward teenage years my best buddy Jeff and I started a new tradition - cardboard robot battles! We constructed robots out of cardboard and each robot had a bridge complete with captain and crew inside the head. A few days after July 4th the battle would begin using fireworks as ammunition. Whoever lost their head (not ours, the cardboard robot’s) they were the losers.
Ok, let’s roll film. Don’t blink as it’s only 14 seconds long.
And there you have it - the first cardboard robot battle. My robot, the one with the Styrofoam front is on the right and Jeff’s is on the left. We used all kinds of fireworks as ammunition. The best weapons were the large bottle rockets, the ones with the plastic nose cone. We removed the nose cone and replaced it with two nails. These baddies were shot out of the robot’s cannons (toilet and paper towel rolls) and would stick into the opponent’s robot inflicting some major damage. (Hey kid’s don’t try this at home as it will bring grief and worry to your mother. My mom got her first strand of gray hair that day) For this first historic battle - Jeff’s robot won. A dreaded nailhead rocket blew my robot’s head clean off.
Amazing, but my robot’s captain managed to survive, as we found him on the ground a few feet away from the smouldering head. I guess the captain's command chair doubled as an ejector chair. I’ve kept him all these years for a souvenir.
Here's a photo of our robots from the final battle and you can read the 2006 post by following this link.
Now if I can just find photos or video of the only battle that I won. Jeff was the cardboard robot king!
1 comment:
Ha ha, awesome man! Go Nagi would be proud.
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