Robert Kinoshita who created two of the most famous robots in history for “Lost in Space” and “Forbidden Planet” has shuffled off this mortal coil at 100.
Robert the Robot Maker died Dec. 9. 2014 and a private ceremony was held Dec. 23. The sad news was made public today.
Kinoshita was a senior designer at MGM when he created Robby the Robot for the Cinemascope big-budget space opera that hit the big screen in 1956, ushering in a new era of special effects flicks.
Robby the Robot was so popular he not only starred in his own sequel “The Invisible Boy” but also made numerous appearances in TV shows including “The Twilight Zone”. Later, he appeared on “Lost in Space” battling his own descendant – also created by Robert – the Space Family Robinson’s B-9.
In an interview Robert recalled how they were having trouble drafting a design for Robby when he just made a model – a model that became the template for pop cult’s post war robotics.
“What really impairs a designer is when you put a human being inside the robot,” Robert told Rafu Shimpo. “Your dimensions are very limited in what you can do, so I tried to camouflage it enough so you’d wonder where the hell the human was.”
After working for various TV studios on such shows as “Sea Hunt” and “Bat Masterson” in the late 1950s Robert got the call from producer Irwin Allen to get cracking on a new robot — The Lost in Space Robot known only as “The Robot” (aka B9)!
With “Danger – Will Robinson!” permanently embedded in the cultural consciousness, Robert admitted he had another name for the famed metal man -“Blinky”.
“We had a contest to name him but none of it took. There must’ve been a couple of hundreds of names submitted… “ Robert said.
“Blinky was the favorite for us because it was always blinking.”
Farewell to The Master….
