Yes, even more black robot rants. Please click here to see previous items in this train of thought.
While musing on the topic of why robots tend to depict white people, I tried to come of with a list of famous black robots. So far: Robby The Robot and Simon The Cylon.
The Empire from the "Star Wars" series, strangely enough, is not a big employer of robots. They seem to prefer the human touch, or at least human clones. The few black Imperial robots involve some R-2 repair units rarely seen, and a glimpse of at TC protocol droid similar to an ebony C-3P0. I would argue one of the most famous is the little box on wheels that Chewbacca yells at in the Death Star. A very simple special effect, it's obviously a remote control car with some model parts glued on top.
Leave it to Star Wars geeks to come up with a backstory for every blessed frame of every movie. A quick Internet search shows that this creature has a name: MSE-6, or Mouse 'Droid.
I think it's pretty funny that the Empire would take the time and effort to paint every floor, ceiling, and wall of the Death Star black, give all the soldiers crazy masked helmets that are very difficult to see out of, and then pepper every level with an assortment of these little black bots for everybody to trip over. No wonder Chewie gets chuffed.
The MSE-6 is the intellectual property of Lucasfilm, as is Star Wars. The Imperial logo, although you can barely see it (thank you Blogger lossy image compression algorythm), was drawn by Jim Wisniewski, although it is just a copy from some other Lucasfilm material.
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