What Ever Happened To These Robots From The Golden Age of Robot Wars?

With the new series of Robot Wars well underway, we've accustomed ourselves to the sight of unprecedented carnage. The robots are bigger, the engines more powerful, and the weapons mightier than ever before. There have been tonnes of new robots for us to feast our eyes upon, not to mention some cameos from old favourites like Thor, Behemoth and Razer – the latter of whom unceremoniously dumped itself into the Pit of Oblivion at the earliest opportunity.

Despite having been upgraded and reworked in the meantime, those robots represent a nostalgic throwback to the golden age of Robot Wars, and the halcyon days of after-school television, dinners on trays, and Craig Charles' evocative end-of-show poetry recitals.

Still, as great as it is to watch a handful of returning champions do battle, we can't help but notice that there a quite a few robots missing from the scene. In fact, there are dozens of competitors from vintage Robot Wars who we expected to get a revamp, but which haven't yet appeared on the new series. Here are the robots who we hope to see feature in the next couple of weeks, even if they do end up getting set on fire and/or smashed to smithereens.

Of all the competitor robots on the old series of Robot Wars, Hypno-Disc is the one everyone remembers. Though it never won a Grand Final, it was doubtlessly the most stylish robot ever to grace the arena floor. Featuring from the Third War onwards, as well as appearing on two series of Robot Wars Extreme, it tore through 20 competitors with its vicious spinning blade and lost only 10 fights. It was a bit vulnerable to being flipped on its back but, apart from that, it was almost flawless in its design. It even had a mesmerising spiral pattern painted onto its lethal flywheel, making it look like an evil metal version of Kaa from The Jungle Book.

With a design like that, it would have been a perfect candidate for an upgrade ahead of the new series. Plus, it was piloted by two adult sons and an eccentric dad from the Northamptonshire village of Milton Cheney, which is absolute peak Robot Wars.

If Robot Wars was the Premier League, then Chaos 2 would be Manchester United. The most successful robot of all time, it was named champion in both the Third and Fourth Wars and was an inaugural member of the Combat Robot Hall of Fame. With its compact flipper and its small, manoeuvrable carapace, it was a perfect combination of power and precision. It was also driven in absolutely relentless fashion, either by Robot Wars legend George Francis or dad-and-lad combo Ian and Richard Swann, who were, of course, from Ipswich.

While Chaos 2 was a bit too successful to be our favourite robot, it certainly had the standing and status to make a successful return this series. It was unstoppable at its best, and even battered the house robots a couple of times.

That's exactly the sort of thing which gets you a significant spell in the Ipswich museum, if not a return to the arena in 2016.

Another George Francis creation, Robot The Bruce reached the Grand Final of the First War before being beaten shitless by a robot called Roadblock. Francis soon jumped ship to Chaos 2 and Robot The Bruce was quietly jettisoned, probably in some dark recess of his dad's garage, underneath a mammoth toolkit and a cardboard box brimming with model railway magazines. In fairness, it was quite a limited robot, and had no weapons bar its own brute size and strength.

That said, it had by far the best pun-based name in Robot Wars. The puns have been a bit lacklustre in the new series – we're looking at you 'Foxic' – so we think Robot The Bruce deserves to be included on that basis alone.

See above, really. Wheely Big Cheese was a bit cack as a fighting robot but, much like Robot The Bruce, was redeemed by its excellent name. It had a massive, ineffective flipper as its main weapon, looked like a giant piece of cheese and had a pair of excessively large wheels, hence its 'Wheely Big' billing.

It would be fun to see how it would shape up against a hyper-powerful modern robot, like Carbide, say. Our bet is that it would be beaten very cheeasily. Classic.

Where do we even start with this clusterfuck of a robot? Robochicken was so fantastically rubbish, it deserves to be smashed to shit on Robot Wars forevermore. Hours and hours of effort went into constructing it, wiring its insides and decorating it to look like a giant, cross-eyed chicken, before it was repeatedly demolished in just under a minute by far-superior robots. Its main weapons were a small tail flipper and a pecking bobble head, for Christ's sake.

Still, it had comedy value. It even inspired Philippa Forrester to utter the line: "I'm not sure if you've heard about factory chickens in the news in the past few months, being kept in small cages… well, this is what happens!" That was what passed for topical humour, back then.

Right, so where the hell has Refbot gone? There can be no excuse for getting rid of Refbot, the impartial robot who made Robot Wars truly fair. Refbot was the dealer of justice, the master of impartiality, deciding when an immobile robot could be declared officially defeated. At that point, Sir Killalot would pile in, crunch the robot up in his pincer and hurl it into the Pit of Oblivion, prompting a huge billow of white smoke to rise triumphantly from the floor.

Now, there is no Refbot. We trust Noel Sharkey and co. in his absence, of course, but that doesn't mean Refbot should have been perfunctorily retired. Actually, come to think of it, we've remembered the reason behind Refbot's retirement, namely the time that he got into a massive fight with Sgt. Bash. His mask of impartiality slipped for a mere second, and that was his undoing. Even a refereeing robot has a breaking point, as it turns out.

Of all the house robots, Mr Psycho was probably the least practical. Weighing in at well over 600kg, he was the heaviest machine ever to appear on vintage Robot Wars. Armed with a giant grabber and a pulverising hammer, he looked seriously formidable. Unfortunately, he moved at the pace of a 1950s refrigerator, and consequently struggled to smash anything but the slowest of foes.

With engine technology having come on leaps and bounds since his introduction in the Sixth War, however, Mr Psycho could now live up to his terrifying potential. He could probably motor around at 60mph these days, demolishing fellow robots, safety features and studio walls. Picture a revamped Mr Psycho, barrelling through the side of the arena before engaging in hand-to-hand combat with Dara Ó Briain. That is what the BBC is missing out on, with their rules, and their regulations, and their 'health and safety'.

First introduced during the Third War, Diotoir was piloted by three large Irish gentlemen. It was also famous for being the robot that, without fail, would burst into flames. It didn't help that it was covered in highly flammable red felt, while its creators seemed to view the programme as a bit of craic and hence drive it wilfully into the flame pit, just to upset Jonathan Pearce. "DIOTOR IS ON FIRE, AGAIN!" he'd have to scream, literally every time it was on the programme.

Having burst into flames for the umpeenth time, Diotor was rebranded 'Diotor 2' for the Fifth War. It was no less flammable and, much like the original Diotoir, we would bring it back simply to watch it burn.

Of all the robots missing from the new series of Robot Wars, Sgt. Bash is the most conspicuous. The only one of the house robots not to get an upgrade, his disappearance remains one of the greatest mysteries of the modern age. With his trademark flamethrower and pinching mouthpart, he bossed his patrol zone like an absolute don.

That said, flamethrowers tend to do very little damage to properly insulated robots. If we're honest, Sgt. Bash's main job was to set Diotoir on fire once a series.

Still, that's a job worth doing.

@W_F_Magee