Kids and Cute Robots

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    Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the sugar coma!

    In a future time, children will work together

     To build a giant cyborg!

     Robot parade, robot parade, wave the flags that the robots made!

     Robot parade, robot parade, robots obey what the children say...

    —They Might Be Giants
    "I hate funny robots."
    —The Tenth Doctor, "The Waters of Mars", clearly forgetting a Robot Buddy he once knew...

    The death knell for any attempt at a serious science fiction work, especially if it is supposed to be military-flavored, is the inclusion of some manner of allegedly "kid-friendly" or "kid-appeal" character, regardless of whether kids are in the story's target audience. Often such encrustations are forced on a production by an executive, or hastily added by the creative team in order to mollify Moral Guardians of one stripe or another. Such additions usually take the form of a child and/or a robot added to the primary cast. The robot is invariably too cutesy or smart-ass, or the kid too twee or saccharine, and the serious aspects of the show suffer from the resulting dissonance and unevenness of tone.

    Sometimes the kid is deathly ill. At that point, you should be afraid. Very afraid.

    The Trope Namer is a 1991 posting on GEnie (a now-defunct online service from General Electric) by Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski, in which he promised the SF community that (among other things) his then-upcoming show would have no kids or cute robots, ever.[1]

    When adding examples, remember please that this trope is not about the simple presence of kids and/or robots in a show. It requires several specific conditions to actually be present:

    1. The work is science fiction or fantasy.
    2. The work is not about the kid(s) and/or robot(s).
    3. The kid(s) and/or robot(s) are regulars, not one-shot appearances.
    4. They only provide comic relief or "human interest" for the main characters, or are at most The Wesley; they are always secondary to the main action, and if you removed them from the work, there would be little to no negative impact on the overall plot or concept.
    5. Optional: there is evidence, either anecdotal or otherwise, that the kid(s) and/or robot(s) were added to the show by the production team or a suit somewhere because they were convinced that SF/F was always and only "for kids" and thus any SF/F show was required to have "kid appeal" elements.

    Sub-Trope of Kid Appeal Character.

    See also Disneyfication, a Sister Trope to this which describes the complete overhaul of an adult property to make it "kid friendly".

    Compare Robot Buddy, which straddles both this trope and its aversion. Contrast Cute Machines, in which the robot in question has a purpose other than "kid appeal" and while adorable manages to stay out of Tastes Like Diabetes territory.

    Examples of Kids and Cute Robots include:

    Anime and Manga

    • As with everything, parodied on Galaxy Angel, which adds to the original cast a robot and two cute kids, all three of which are found incredibly annoying to the main cast.
    • The venerable Gundam has more than enough kids and robots in its many incarnations than anyone might to wish, being essentially the Trope Codifier. Indeed, it was original Mobile Suit Gundam that introduced the motif, much loved by producers and much resented by the viewers, of three annoying rugrats with its trio of Katz, Letz and Kikka. Sure, this was justified by the ship being stuffed full of refugees, but this justification didn't make them any less annoying. It also features a cute robot in the form of Haro; however, it generally serves as little more than an advanced toy and a mascot for the Gundam franchise as a whole. Haro is actually popular enough that it is the only character to exist in more than one Alternate Universe.
    • For some, this ruins Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. For others, it doesn't really matter. For others, childlike robots with no sense of right and wrong, a curious mind, machine guns and a grenade launcher are terrifying.
      • They are also in the Manga, however instead of "Tachikoma" they are called "Fuchikoma" and they look a bit different, but they have the exact same personality, and abilities. They were left out of the two movies however.
    • Battle of the Planets, the American adaptation of Gatchaman, took this trope so far as to edit in a cute robot character (in an obviously different art style) named 7-Zark-7 who is a true Scrappy. Initially he was put in because of the popularity of Star Wars at the time, but then the segments with him were used to fill up the time lost from the cuts of violence.

    Film

    • Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace features an archetypal example of this in Anakin Skywalker. He annoyed many fans for being a blatant example of an Impossibly Lucky Cute Kid -- who happened to build his own Robot Buddy (and gained another in the form of R2-D2).
      • Not helped by the fact he grows up to be space Hitler.
        • Or maybe space Goering.
      • This is made even worse by the fact that TPM came out in 1999 - decades after eye-rollers like the original Battlestar Galactica and assiduous subverters like Babylon 5 were supposed to have turned this into a Dead Horse Trope. Trying to play the trope straight without reconstructing it led to... issues.
    • Non sci-fi example: Rocky IV has a cute kid, and a frickin' robot who does chores and crap. And the sharks were jumped.
    • Does a take in RoboCop 2, with the child crime lord who died in his arms. Also happens in the third film, when a young girl hacks an ED-209 security robot with her (oddly retro) laptop.

    Live-Action Television

    • Robocop: The Series had a young girl named Gadget who hung around Murphy all the time.
    • Twiki on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
    • Boxey and Muffet (a double-whammy!) on the original Battlestar Galactica -- as seen in the page image.
      • Worse than Boxey and Muffet were the gang of "boy scouts" who ended up super-powered when visiting Earth on Galactica 1980. Worse than them was the mutant pre-teen hypergenius "Dr. Zee". Par for the course with this trope, the "super scouts" were explicitly the result of Executive Meddling -- the series was supposed to be a tense series of Time Travel dramas, but the execs couldn't imagine a serious dramatic SF series aimed at adults and insisted it be reworked for "kid appeal".
    • The 2000s Battlestar Galactica had its own Boxey in the Miniseries, who appears to be a case of playing with this trope. The son of the official sent to the armistice station, his father was killed by the returning Cylons, presumably their first victim. He appeared in one other episode, being smart-alecky to Tigh and the pilots with Starbuck, then simply vanished without mention. Fans joked that "he was delicious". The writers claim he was adopted.
    • Subverted several times on Babylon 5: A cute kid did once show up in the episode "Believers". He was killed by his own parents for religious reasons before the end of the episode. Another came in later (episode: "Confessions and Lamentations"), and her species was driven to extinction before the end of the episode.
    • And let us not forget Will Robinson and his Robot on Lost in Space.
    • Sharply parodied in Mystery Science Theater 3000, with Timmy Bobby Rusty (Paul Chaplin), as Dr. Forrester tries to boost the show's lagging ratings.

    Western Animation

    • Because of a film option taken out on the Human Torch (which never materialized), one animated version of The Fantastic Four had to replace him with "H.E.R.B.I.E. the Robot".
      • Lampshaded in one issue of the comic, when Reed Richards is caught building it and says he's doing it because he's sick of being asked where it is.
    • Parodied in South Park, when Cartman sent himself 700 years into the future to become the "time child" with his sidekick, a robotic dog whom he hates and tries to sell.
      • Then there's the episode where he poses as a the "Awesome-mo 4000", initially in order to prank Butters, but later to steal some embrassing tape Butters was planning on blackmailing Cartman with. And yet, Butters is a very cute kid (being driven to blackmail only because of how evil Cartman is.)
    • Batman Beyond gave rise to a short-lived spin-off called The Zeta Project about a shapeshifting robot and his wise-cracking 14-year-old girl sidekick.
    • In M.A.S.K., Scott Trakker (son of the series' main character) built his own Robot Buddy, T-Bob; they remain inseparable throughout the series.
      • This troper warns you to be very wary of the Nostalgia Filter that comes with thinking about M.A.S.K. You might remember the awesome theme song and action of the show. Hell, you might actually want to start e-baying the original toys. However, much to my agonizing surprise, I completely forgot about the annoying kid and his robot. So much in fact that in hindsight, this show is barely watchable. YMMV though, but basically every time Venom gets away, is because Scott and T-Bot are stupid enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. AAAAARGH!
    1. ↑ As a point of fact, it did. But they all died almost as soon as they appeared.
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