Review – Double Coin Bestoy Series Robot

While on vacation last month Gina and I visited Red Hot Robot in Phoenix where we found lots of neat toys (and shirts). One of the simplest and cheapest toys, though, was a screwy little wind-up robot for $5. It’s not flashy, it’s not articulated, but it’s a fun piece that has a really retro design. And it’s shiny green! How could I resist?

Packaging

Very, very cheap. A plastic bag with no graphics at all. There’s not even really any text on this thing. This is one of those packages that you immediately rip open and toss in the trash.

Shiny!

Vac-metalized toys aren’t as common as they once were but this (roughly) 4-inch tall guy is nice and shiny (so shiny, in fact, that you can see my reflection in some of the photos). Shiny green with a matte green paint used for some of the details, there’s really nothing super exciting about this toy but that doesn’t mean it’s not kinda fun to race across the floor. The red wheel on the back is the wind-up mechanism that takes only a couple of twists and then the wheels are ready to spin. The toy’s very cheap, though, and the wind-up feels like it’s gonna snap at any moment.

Sculpt and Paint

Both are pretty basic, with most of the details quite crude and the paint very sloppy. But that’s about all that we can expect from a $5 toy that probably was produced for a tiny company that specializes in churning out inexpensive toys for quick sale. This thing is fine as it is but I’m betting that a toy customizer could turn this thing into something crazy. (I again direct you to toybot studios and say that the cool paint jobs shown on many of the toys over there would fit perfectly with this piece.)

Closing Thoughts

What more can I say? This is the sort of thing you can probably find at a junk sale or flea market — maybe even a dollar store — and the only thing that makes it fun is that fact that it’s a shiny green robot. It’s not great — hell, it’s not even good — but this guy would feel right at home in a toy robot collection.

Philip Reed continues to resist buying tin robots, but he does kinda wish he could have a display case packed with nothing but unusual robot toys. Is it time for a bigger house?