TOBOR the ROBOT LIVES!

The original sheet metal robot TOBOR THE GREAT was designed and built by Howard and Theodore Lydecker in 1954, with the assistance of two designers and fabricators, named Robert Kinoshita and Melbourne Arnold. Wikipedia is incorrect for giving Kinoshita full credit for this, since he was brought in as a consultant and did not actually design it. He went from Republic to MGM afterward, to work on ROBBY THE ROBOT for FORBIDDEN PLANET.
After the movie was made, TOBOR was again put to work in a pilot for a 30-minute TV show named HERE COMES TOBOR in 1955, which was not picked up by the networks.
It's easy to see why. The TV pilot is too much like LASSIE, with the robot replacing the dog, and it just doesn't work very well. If the makers of this pilot had stuck to the original concept, and hired Billy Chapin to play the boy, and kept Professor Nordstrom as a character, as Tobor's inventor, then it would have probably succeeded, especially if Lee Sholem, the film's director, had directed the episode himself. Lee Sholem was already well known as a director of some episodes of the TV series "The Adventures of Superman".
After that, Tobor was 'borrowed' from Republic Studios in Studio City to draw attention to a hardware store on Ventura Blvd. in Sherman Oaks, and then disappeared around 1956.

Fast forward to 2008. Fred Barton, builder of replicas of ROBBY THE ROBOT, came into contact with someone who had the original TOBOR stored away somewhere, and was willing to allow him to come and photograph it, measure it, and even take it apart and put it back together to make a complete replica of it himself. He was aided in this quest by a very interesting fellow up in Washington State, named John Rigg, who owns the Robot Hut. It seems Mr. Rigg tracked down the whereabouts of Tobor, and purchased him for his robot museum. Fred Barton went and upon his return, made about a half-dozen exact replica copies of TOBOR.

Dejael