A short lived cult line of remote control robot toys. Released in 2000, the line sold over 2 million units before sadly being discontinued due to Trendmasters filing for bankruptcy.
The series is famous for combining elements of BattleBots, Trading cards, and RPGs. Players begin by selecting their individual robot to battle with, then swiping a series of "upgrade" cards to alter the behaviors of the bots, improving their performance in certain areas while reducing it in others. Infrared Lasers mounted to the front every bot's chassis allowed them to blast one another at range, while each bot had one of three basic mechanisms for punching to deal physical damage by either overturning its competitor or hitting their weak point antenna mounted to the back. On top of damage dealing, bots could use cards to upgrade their movement speeds, laser resistance, or overall health
Also notable in that the Bots could store their performance data and rank up in "experience" themselves. The more a bot won, the higher its upgrade cards could take it.
In late 2001 Armor and Traps were released for the line, adding to the BattleBots parallels. In mid-2002, shortly before the bankruptcy of Trendmasters, two new main bots were released. King Slugnut and El Smasho, who were in turn accompanied by an array of "lesser" bots. Knights were smaller but could be controlled like "true" bots but lacked the upgrade features, or they could be tuned into the same Infrared frequencies as the King bots and controlled simultaneously with them from a single remote. Pawns meanwhile could only drive autonomously and periodically fire lasers with no input from the player.
Tropes specific to this toyline:
- Anchors Away: Slugnut's armor upgrade gives him a gigantic extending anchor weapon on his right arm.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Enforced in multiple variations. Despite eight "true" bots, only two can battle each other at a time due to the limits of the Infrared channels in the controllers. In addition, a King unit can only command two knights and two pawns at a time, and these are fixed amounts, so players can't command a fleet of four pawns or knights if they elect to ignore the other portions of the equation.
- Artificial Limbs: El Smasho and Slugnut are built to have their arms replaced with upgraded weapons. Specifically they both can have their right arms replaced, Slugnut gets an anchor mounted to an extendo arm, and El Smasho gets an Epic Flail.
- Artistic License – Engineering: Several of the bots lines veer into this.
- El Smasho: My Circuits have been re-fried!
- Blade Below the Shoulder: Bitor's armor upgrade gives him one mounted to his forearm. Notably he still gets to keep his Power Pincer on that arm too!
- Cast of Snowflakes: Overlaps with Color-Coded for Your Convenience. Every bot has a unique color scheme, as well a unique design aesthetic. note
- Collectible Card Game: how players were encouraged to "upgrade" their bots. Each bot also came with a couple of packs of "starter" cards, as the toys outright would not obey the remote control without being upgraded.
- Epic Flail: El Smasho's replacement upgraded right arm, and Me Fisto's available weapon upgrades.
- Equipment Upgrade: Released as separate purchases for each of the bots. Each one can be given add on armor or weapons, in some cases full on replacement limbs, to make them hit harder, more likely to overturn an opponent, or extend their reach.
- Extendo Boxing Glove: The Punch mechanism used for Boltman, Lugnut, and El Smasho.
- Fighter, Mage, Thief: The three primary concentrations a bot can have. Because you have an extremely limited amount of upgrade slots for your bots (a mere three max level upgrades) you'll need to focus on making your bot good at one thing to win. Laser focused builds become the Mage, unable to shrug off much punishment and unlikely to be very fast or punch very often, Tanking focused builds become the Fighter, able to absorb laser shots while they close the distance to try and go for knockovers or hitting the opponent's weak spot, and speed and punch focused builds become the thief, able to move quickly and unleash Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs but not able to take much damage from lasers and still just as vulnerable to an overturn or getting hit in their weak spot.
- Frickin' Laser Beams: The sole ranged attack method for bots. Lasers can in turn be mitigated by upgrading the bot's health or laser defense (or both) to reduce damage at range
- Good Old Fisticuffs: One of the two primary attack methods for bots. Notably there are three primary variations for flavor. MeFisto, Bitor, and Slugnut's left arm use Hooking punches, Lugnut, El Smasho, and Boltman use Extending straight punches, and Calmster, Lobjaw, and Slugnut's right arm use Hammer punches.
- Made of Indestructium: Almost literally for the original six. On top of being almost totally invulnerable to one-another's weapons and punching capacity (at least in terms of permanent damage), their shells are extremely durable against falls, rolls, and other incidental damage that comes with child toys focused around beating one another up. Sadly averted with El Smasho and Slugnut, whose metallic plastic color schemes are prone to Gold Plastic Syndrome
and are generally more fragile than their predecessors. - Power Fist: MeFisto, Slugnut, Clamster, Boltman, and El Smasho all have them as their default weapons
- Power Pincers: Bitor has them in his base form and his armored one, and Knight Slugnoid gets them with his armored form.
- Power-Up: the core element of the game, swiping upgrade cards before battle affects the limiters on the motors in each bot, allowing them to move faster, punch faster, or deal/take more damage with their IR Lasers.
- Sinister Scythe: Boltman gets a lightningbolt themed one as part of his armor upgrade.
- Shout-Out: primarily with the added armor upgrades
- Lugnut's armor gives him V fins and the color scheme and body shape of Optimus Prime
- Clamster's armor turns him into RoboCop.
- Lobjaw's armor turns him into a mishmash of the various giant robot car-destroying robots from demolition derbies of the day, such as Robosaurus.
- Smurfette Principle: Of the 12 available units between the originals, the kings, knights, and pawns, only Slammy, the Blue-team pawn, is coded female.
- Though because she's a Pawn unit she can avert this in practice.
- Sound-Only Death: The only indication a bot has "died" and lost is that they tell you they're down for the count.
- Slugnut: "Argh! I am defeated!"
- Trash Talk: every bot has a "taunt" card, which can be swiped to make them fire off some smack talk or pun
- MeFisto: You got a face even a motha' could slug!
- World of Ham: Every bot hams it up to the best their tiny in-built speaker can manage
- Bitor: *upon booting up* I AM BITOR! AND I'M ARMED TO THE TEETH!
