CYBOTS

This article is based on a theme that was not released.
Although this article is based on an official subject, its was never officially released or produced.

CYBOTS is an unreleased theme created by the LEGO group. It contained action figures using both System and the first TECHNIC ball joint parts. Several prototype models were created but final versions were not made. This theme was made mainly to test the first LEGO ball joints, which would be later used three years later on the Slizer theme.

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It is very exciting to get to share these files. This is where it all began to my account. It was the summer of 1995 where I finally got time to tryout an idea. I gathered some LEGO Technic elements and some sculpting clay and mashed together some characters with moulded arms, legs and heads and the rest build out of LEGO. I wanted to test if it was possible to build an action figure. We agreed to take the concept further and I worked together with Jan Kjær, myformer assistant to nail the concept. It was named CYBOTS and we presented to the development department at LEGO. They liked it. This resulted in a short project setup where I worked together with a designer (sadly I can’t remember his name, please write if you are out there. I would love to get your name into this blog) to try to turn my clay into actual useable LEGO elements. There was one major design issue and that was the joints connecting the body parts. We needed something flexible and easy and the closest solution was to look at nature: The ball joint. This invention is still to this day the most important to this whole category.

We did a full concept description and a universe where the CYBOTS was robots sent deep below the surface of the earth to areas where humans couldn’t enter to hunt for energy crystals. Some CYBOTS had malfunctioned and rebelled against their human inventors and had claimed the depths of the planet as their own. This project and the ball joint disappeared for some years in thedevelopment department at LEGO but it was great to see the first prototypes of the Slizer robots with full functional ball joints that were brought to Advance in 1998 when we got briefed on this new project.

The CYBOTS underground setting also appeared later both in Rock Raiders (1999) and Power Miners (2009).

It is great that stuff that works always seems to surface at some point in time, so there is only one rule when working with LEGO: “It’s an amazing brand so you better do amazing things, nothing less is acceptable”