Nickelodeon Game Shows That Crossed The Pond #3 - Robot Wars

In 1998, long before he was traveling the world with James May and Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson became the host of ‘Robot Wars’ on BBC Two. A series which pitted homemade radio-controlled robots against a series of tasks, which tested the builders' control of their machines and the machine's abilities, and fights against one another testing their durability. Created after producer Tom Gutteridge saw a tape of amateur robot battles in the US, Robot Wars became a Friday night hit for the channel. With commentary by experienced football commentator Jonathan Pearce and pit coverage by Phillipa Forrester, then already known for presenting technology program ‘Tomorrow’s World’, the show became a well-established franchise in the UK market.

In series 2, Clarkson was replaced by Red Dwarf actor Craig Charles (No producers were thumped in that decision) and the show, with its easily recognized characters in the form of the contestants creations and the much larger and more costly produced ‘house robots’, became the basis for toys in the shape of the robots featured, video games, magazines and VHS/DVD releases. There was even a single released under the name of one of the House Robots ‘Sir Killalot’ and in my humble opinion, 'Android Love' makes Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’ seem like Bohemian Rhapsody by comparison. They weren’t going for quality, as a franchise that was followed by children, it was created purely for sales in the same vein as the Mr Blobby single at the height of his popularity. When something is popular, you churn out all you can to sell to people to generate income while you can, and ‘Robot Wars’ certainly did.

 In 1999, Viacom decided they wanted to broadcast a robot combat show on their channel TNN. After a couple of failed negotiations with different organizations, they signed a deal with Mentorn to create six episodes based on the UK format of ‘Robot Wars’, under the title ‘Robot Wars: Extreme Warriors’. Shown in 2001 as a lead-in program to ‘WWF Raw is War’ they got recently retired wrestler Mick Foley, more recognizable to the modern online audeince for those clips making wrestling look extra painful, to host the show and they went down more of a sports entertainment route encouraging teams to trash talk each other. They didn’t use the skill-based challenges and kept it a simple combat-based tournament. Much like Nickelodeon is doing with ‘The Crystal Maze’, the show was produced in the UK and flew some US teams over to use the set at Shepperton Studios.

Now, why Robot Wars is being included here in the first place. Whilst series two of Extreme Warriors was filmed, Nickelodeon filmed a separate series aimed at a younger audience. The teams were borrowed from Extreme Warriors and UK series 5 of RW as well as using a few loanerbots, robots made cheap so people could have a go with no real loss, and during the show the robots would be controlled by children. Hosted by Dave Aizer, who had experience with sports broadcasting for a younger audience having worked with Disney’s ESPN club, the show lasted for one series of six episodes. It followed the same basic format with a few changes for a younger audience and a shorter broadcast slot. Fire-based hazards were removed, including Sgt. Bash’s flamethrower, and each episode only had 4 battles. Both the TNN and Nickelodeon shows disappeared from schedules as they couldn’t compete with Battlebots which itself soon went off air despite plenty of merchandise available. However, Battlebots made a return in the US a few years ago and is still running as of August 2019.

Next Week: Even though it's not a Nick show, I'm doing Fun House anyway, because it's Fun House.