Johnny Five creator looking to cash-in

Remember that Short Circuit movie (you know, the one where cute little robot Johnny Five befriends some cute kid- it was totally the feel good movie of whatever year it came out in)? Well not only do some people remember it (and the sequel, Short Circuit 2), they have actually devoted a website to discussing all things Johnny Five. Members of the forum are slightly ecstatic as of late, because J-5 designer Eric Allard is considering producing a line of merchandise, pending adequate interest. Allard is looking to sell blueprints and parts to make your very own Johnny, as well as pre-assembled radio-controlled J-5s for the kids. You can show your support for this project by following the "Read" link; just don't insult these fanatics with any of that "Hey Laserlips! Your mama was a snowblower!" stuff.

[Thanks, William]

[Pip @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

oh god no

[Dignan17 @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

Johnny Five! I always wanted one of those toys they were manufacturing in the sequel.

Fisher Stevens...as an Indian American. Weird.

[AceMilo @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

Who's Johnny? la la la laaa la la la la laaa Who's Johnny? la la la laaa laa laaa

(ok so I don't know the words)

[twoback @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

los locos kick your butt into outer spaaaaaaaaace!

[Jason @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who remembered that line!

[Benson Leung @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

#4... i believe the real line from the movie contains the word "balls"

[olderty @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

The sequel was a huge steaming pile of movie.

First one is *** in my book.

[Johnny @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

I was named after that robot! Well maybe I wasn't, but still, having a robot with the same name is cool, even if it's a clumsy dumb ass robot.

I recently saw the movies (both) again, but it just didn't look as cool anymore as it did 10 years ago.

[Jason @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

#5 you are correct

Los locos kick your ass! Los locos kick your face! Los locos kick your balls into outer space!

[Martin @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

Okay then . . slow news day I guess. Seeing how we have to go all the way boack to a story from October 29, 2003, as stated at teh top of the linked page.

Thanks for the current events.

[Kevin @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

Frankie, you broke the unwritten law. You ratted on your friends. When you do that Frankie, your enemies don't respect you. You got no friends no more. You got nobody, Frankie

[Stool @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

Number 9, Number 5 is alive.

[TZK @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

Isnt that the guitarist for Marilyn Manson?

HAHAHAHA.. ok.

[Cashmore @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

Johnny five is alive!

[Boynamedsue @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

there was no kid.

[James @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

This movie was great... at the time.

After miserably watching a re-run recently on TV I can say without hesitation that it is total junk.

[Craig @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

'just don�t insult these fanatics with any of that �Hey Laserlips! Your mama was a snowblower!� stuff.'

nerds making fun of bigger nerds

[Jeff @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

"This movie was great... at the time.

After miserably watching a re-run recently on TV I can say without hesitation that it is total junk."


Try watching reruns of MacGyver after 15 years. I couldn't sit through the entire episode.

[Jason Anderson @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

Cute Kid? Have you even SEEN the movies? There are no kids in them! They're all grown adults. Next time do some research! :-
Either way, Johnny Five is my favorite robot of all time. I especially love when he got "upgraded" to a 5 megabyte hard drive so he could store more input. LOL Can you even store a book on a 5MB HD? The Hitchhikers 5 book trilogy itself takes up 2MB. Try getting Harry Potter's library on one! ;-)

If someone did create a realistic scale model of J5, I would totally buy it and display it next to my Nintendo R.O.B. and my display model Robosapien.

On the subject of MacGyver, don't knock the Mac! I enjoy an episode every now and then.

[emanuel @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

actually it goes, "los locos kick your ass. Los Locos kick your face. Los Locos kick your balls into ouuter space!" I remember it cuz some guy in school would always say it, over and over again.

[JohnnyCashAK @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

Befriends a cute kid? WTF? J5 is a suave mofo who can trash a girls shit and still get a hot dance with her fresh out of the shower. On top of that, brother is packing a nuclear explosive, so you'd better be laughing at his three stooges impressions.
Personally I would love to see a line of toys based on the J-man to come out. They were the only good thing about that retarded sequel.

[Justin Bell @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

That used to be my favorite movie when I was a kid. Guess it's no coincidence that I read engadget daily, or that I used to up all my electronics apart.

[Galley @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

"I'm sporting a tremendous woody".

[debilio @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

The post on that site is 2 years old..?

[JOhnnyprozac @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

19...actually if you code the compression right and be elegant with the structure of your code...and program/data of whatever complexity can be reduced infitesmally. Its just with the cost of storage so low most programmers and people have no reason to.

I have seen a demo somewhere of a game with DX9+ graphics (with all the shader and physics code) in a 5 mb package. It was something on par with Half Life 2.

But on a robot? like Johnny 5? The complexity and power needs of his weaponery, sensor suites, motor mechanisms, speakers, his treads and the rest of the physical plant would neccesitate that the storage medium not draw too much power, be quick in IO, and be small enough to fit in that relativey small fram already packed with everything else. Otherwise power supply would be too big and heavy to be mobile. Any slowdown in efficiency of the power would also limit the ability for JOhnny 5 and the Nova robots to be autonomous too

So in a weird way the 5 MB isn't so "rolling eyes at how outdated it seems" fodder. A multipurpose autonomous robot wouldn't necessarily need or should have to have a huge and memory gobbling control suite.

[Maikeru @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

#25 I think that game was KKruger, but its file size was around 900k and it had graphics about as good as the first Quake. The way that game achieved that is that the CPU and RAM put in some extra work generating random textures for all the models by algorithim.

Though in the second movie it's interesting noting the huge promotion for Radio Shack. At the time they were one of the few places you could pick up everything you needed to D.I.Y. in the electronics world and thus actually teach you enough electronics to create some decent devices. It's interesting to see the company move more towards the consumer electronics market with the few "componants" they actually still sell being fuses and A/V cabling/adapters.

[zoara @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

Er, JOhnnyprozac, if you've discovered infinite lossless compression, then I'm impressed. Please compress the whole Short Circuit film into one byte and email it to me. Thanks!

[DannyMac @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

Will centience be included or will one have to buy that extra?