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In the years leading up to and during the second World War, there was an explosion of breakthroughs in robotic tech. Appliance and weapon manufacturers saw this era an opportunity to expand into the world of robotics. This is where ambitious young entrepreneurs like John Sterling seized the moment.  

The mural we see here, is a piece of post-war Sterling advertising, by which point, Sterling had proven itself as the new prestige brand of robotics. 


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Dr. Rodin

Huh, a thought occurred to me looking back at this from the current point of the story. It’s ironic they made this mural/ad that conveys nature & the outdoors sort of associated with their bots, when they designed their bots to b mainly indoors as much as possible. Their most mobile/agile line being their nandroids are only designed to escort their charges to and from between school, the park, their home and even when Emmy went to town with the family Emmy cannot be too far from her charge & her owners. Emmy made a succinct point later on that she doesn’t have a GPS, Sterling bots are literally designed to not survive in the elements for long, they need to recharge basically every night in which their battery could last not more than two days tops.

Dr. Rodin

Also, “Tin Man” here look quite different from Tin Man in the tv spot with Sterling years later. It could b that they changed up the design from presumably the concept art here. But I like to think the Tin Man we see later on in a glass case is a more upgraded version of the one here, a more complete but primitive model when I think this “working” version was prolly scrapped during the innovation process I can only guess it took years for Sterling & this other scientist to “complete”.

emmytherobot

That’s right on! The one pictured here is more like a prototype they built. They gave him an upgraded body when he was revealed to the populace!

Anonymous

This is some great world-building!

Dr. Rodin

These are beautiful pieces of lore and I’ve been working on ad graphics recently on my internship so that “mural” could also work as a full on photograph with a huge wide-lens to capture the beautifully flower fields and Swiss alps with those kids playing with an actual robot from their line. To show off both the heritage of the company and how much they’re willing to be a foreign robotics powerhouse if they can afford fully-colored, wide-angle photography like this back then (film photography was still SUPER expensive)

emmytherobot

I like to think of it as a painted mural rather than photography, like a lot of illustrated ads from mid century America.

Dr. Rodin

I guess yeah a lot of ads back then were illustrated, and in a way it makes sense that they have it illustrated to have an idealized public image for their company instead of actually showing a robot product ready for purchase as they were developing the tech; the tagline on it is to say they’re promising to build high-quality products safe around children.

Anonymous

Lore Tine

Anonymous

interesting, they look like the bots from the spaceship in final space

Anonymous

Hope you don't mind, but that mural just became my desktop background quite quickly.

L_French

Aha! The timeline is coming together. I love it!

Anonymous

I just love this nostalgic feeling your art-style gives me. I can't quite put my finger on what it is exactly but somehow it just reminds me at the old CartoonNetwork shows <3