by Alex Zalben 19 mins ago
Are you ready for the return of ROM The Space Knight? Related: do you know who ROM The Space Knight is? Either way, read on, because MTV News is pleased to exclusively announce a new collectible from Hasbro commemorating the 35th anniversary of ROM!
First, a history lesson. In 1979, Parker Brothers created a new toy robot called ROM, named after the read-only memory in your computer. The toy barely moved, had an LED light (one of the first uses of electronics in a toy) and by all accounts kind of sucked just a little bit.
That didn’t stop ROM from capturing the popular imagination, though, as many failures (it sold less than 300,000 units) often do. It was featured on the front cover of Time magazine, with an unflattering review. But it was really the tie-in comic from Marvel that guaranteed ROM’s popularity beyond the toy shelves.
Created by writer Bill Mantlo and artist Sal Buscema in order to spur sales for the Parker Brothers product, “ROM: SpaceKnight” far outlasted the toy’s shelf life, eventually getting cancelled in 1986 after 75 issues.
In the book, ROM was a cyborg (not a robot), tasked with stopping a race of hideous magic-users from space called the Dire Wraiths. Along with fellow cyborgs, called Spaceknights, ROM battled the Dire Wraiths throughout the galaxy, even ending up on Earth to team up with the Avengers.
In 1986, though, Marvel’s rights to ROM ran out. Even though the toy was (and is) out of production, most instances ...
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