Goebel – Roboter Emil

ONCE UPON A TIME IN GERMANY……there was a strange unknown robot, marked Goebel W.Germany

My best friend Martijn was one of the first viewers and was in a kind of shock, like seeing the flower robot WITH box hitting ebay, or the roboter 700 Although he had never seen this robot before and he felt:  THIS IS SOMETHING, WOW!!!  After a couple of very quick calls and some waiting and waiting (heartbeat 180+ for a couple of hours) the deal was made and finally the robot arrived here in holland, and all he could say to himself all the time is wow, WOW, WOWWWWW!!!!!!!

So now it is time to present some more info about this beautiful robot. Proudly I’m presenting here to you:

Roboter ” EMIL ”  Made in W-Germany in 1968.
Clockwork Mechanism ( wind-up ) with pinwalking action.The Firma GOEBEL in Rödental in Germany produced over 40.000 items over the past 122 years. Their main business is Porzellan ( well known for their Hummel Figures ). They also produced toys in very small quantities and among those more then 40.000 items, they also produced ONE Robot: Roboter Emil. In 1975 Goebel stopped the production of Toys.

Roboter Emil only showed up in their 1968 – 1969 Katalog and can therefore be dated back to the year 1968. A shield with all the logo`s of Goebel was already found. Comparing the logo on the robot with the shield, it shows it MUST have been made between 1964 and 1971.

Roboter EMIL was made in 2 variations:

Variation of 12 cm height with no clockwork mechanism was made in three colors:
Number 40053 blue
Number 40054 yellow (this one also hit ebay some years ago)
Number 40055 red

Variation of 17 cm height with clockwork mechanism ( pinwalking ) was also made in three colors:
Number 40052 blue (this same robot we have here)
Number 40062 yellow
Number 40063 red

After several contacts with Goebel collectors finally somebody was found who was willing to dive into the enormous Goebel archives (over 40.000 items archived) and figure out all the information about this robot. Roboter Emil was invented/made for the ARD 1 TV-serie: Roboter Emil und Tante Bodzenka. This show was based on a earlier eastern europe TV show called Robot Emil, with a man in a robot suit (almost no resemblence to the goebel roboter, my guess is that the ARD took only the concept of the show and gave it a new robot) some more info comes from the czechoslovakian tv show and another early 60s robot toy, made in czechoslovakia by unknown manufacturer, made of wood and springs. This toy looks very much like the goebel roboter emil.

info of the czechoslovakian show is here:
http://blog.edenfutu…robot-emil.html

The people at Goebel were at least very very surprised that this robot showed up because it was produced in very small quantities. They say: ” we knew it was somewhere in a catalog but we can not even remember ever seeing the robot in any variation in real.  We also wondered if Goebel in those days actually díd make Emil.” So the next step was to contact many well known Goebel and Hummel Collectors who deal with Hummel toys with values of even 350.000 euro`s and more ! None of them éver had seen or heard about this robot made by Goebel. One thing I can tell for sure: Roboter Emil is real because you are looking at him right now
I can understand now why this robot never showed up in a collection, book or auction. Even the Factory itself had their doubts íf they ever had made this robot that was showed in their own catalog.  It really looks like this robot was made in very small quantities.

The condition of this robot EMIL 🙂 is near mint, no flaws to mention. He really still works fine with pin walking action. This is the ONLY known to exist example of this robot at this moment. I am sure there will surface some in the near future, but given the info directly from Goebel, there will not be much left.

Well thats about all the information I can give you right now about this Robot, It seems to be official now:
GERMANY`s FOURTH ROBOTER: ROBOTER EMIL 1968 WOW !!!!!!!! HOW COOL IS THAT!!!!!

This is one of the most rare and scarce robots at this moment. Just discovered by MARTIJN !, thanks and for me this robot will be always: Roboter Martijn 🙂 !

This robot is for display only !
If you are interested than contact me on boogo.nl@gmail.com