Metal Mondays: Meet Metal Mickey!

What was British childrens' television like in 1980? Horribly performed and full of boob jokes! But to its credit, one show, at least, starred an ape-like, sarcastic robot who was always randy. I am, of course, talking about Metal Mickey! And you don't get much more metal than THIS:

Looking like the love child of R2D2 and a monkey, Mickey delighted easily amused English audiences for a full three years with his zest for life and his spontaneous boogie. My own memories of Metal Mickey are very vague, like a dream, or a phantom, so I fired up the old youtube time-portal and took a look at episode one to investigate what it was all about.

Gaze upon my often chilling findings AFTER THE JUMP!


So apparently, Metal Mickey is about a family of seventeen chavs who all share the same bedroom. They include the whining, hideous, foul-mouthed granny chav; the equally hideous, scrawny teen ginger chav; the diminutive, awkward, four-eyed git; the simple, gormless girl obsessed with measuring her breasts; and the sassy black neighbour who climbs in the window. There are at least two bunk beds in this room so I shudder to think of the sleeping arrangements.

Anyway, awkward turd Ken is building a robot (Mickey) out of metal (Metal Mickey) to help their cruelly sardonic, flamboyant, and mostly absent father, with the household chores. Everyone pretty much agrees that this steel-wool haired robot is basically a hunk of crap, until sassy neighbour Janey throws caution to the wind (if you want to know how truly reckless she is then checkout her powder blue jumpsuit) and feeds the stillborn Mickey an "intergalactic fizz-bomb" (or something), which is what chavs eat. (When they're not looking at their "mucky books").

So the fizz-bomb has the unexpected effect of super-imposing some terrible animation over Mickey and he springs to life and starts smart-mouthing everyone with his cavernous metal maw. At first, Janey is trapped in the room with him and Mickey takes an instant liking to her human physiology and does his best to entrap and presumably probe her. You've got to love the English. Even in their kid's shows they are dropping entendre like an episode of Are You Being Served?

Predictably Mickey muscles his way to becoming an established member of the family and I assume that all sorts of wacky robot related hijinks and misunderstandings take place. I also assume that it involves a lot of "boogie":

Unfortunately, I missed the end of this episode when youtube itself became sentient and decided that it was no longer going to waste its precious resources on this crap and refused to show me part three. But you can see part one for yourself right here if you think you can stomach it!

I love the theme song, by the way! He's "a lot of fun and weighs half a ton!". Reminds me of a girl I knew...