Robby the Robot robot designed to care for children. In "Tom Swift on The Phantom Satellite" (1956), it is also the name given to a small four-foot robot designed by Tom Swift Jr., the boy inventor in the "Tom Swift Jr." science fiction novel series by Victor Appleton II. Robby the Robot originated as a character in the 1956 MGM science fiction film "Forbidden Planet". The story centers on a crew of space explorers from Earth who land their starship, the C57-D, on the planet Altair IV, ruled by the mysterious Dr. Morbius. Robby is a mechanical servant that Morbius has designed, built,
Robby the Robot original construction. It featured a highly simplified and rather old-fashioned cylindrical "oil can" robot head with stylised 'eyes' (that were illuminated and movable) and a circular 'mouth'; this was enclosed under the distinctively-shaped conical plexiglass dome, but this head's front grille also did not have the blue neon tubes and lacked the rotating external 'ear' pieces seen in "Forbidden Planet". It is not known whether this internal "oil-can'" head was original, but its rather rudimentary design and appearance is clearly not of same exacting MGM standards that are evident in all other "Forbidden Planet" props, and suggests it may have