In the early 80's, I was completely fascinated by robots, droids, and cyborgs. Star Wars opened that door to me with the droids like C-3P0 and R2-D2 and the evil cyborg, Darth Vader. I had already been exposed to cyborgs in T.V. with The Six Million Dollar Man, but I never really thought of him that way - he was just bionic (whatever that meant - hey, I could still show you my age with 2 hands.)
So most of the cyborgs I had known were evil like the Terminator, that is until a friend of mine introduced me to ROM - Spaceknight. Completely covered in shiny silver armor, with red glowing eyes, and a sense of chivalry of knights of old. He looked like a robot, but he actually still had organic components under his shell. And he was a hero.
ROM was not from Earth. He came from the planet Galador, which was attacked by a shapeshifting race called the Dire Wraiths. Galador called out for volunteers from their people to be transformed into cyborgs to combat the Dire Wraiths, with the promise that they could be restored to full humanity when the enemy was defeated. ROM was the first volunteer, 999 other followed forming the Spaceknights.
The Dire Wraiths were chased from Galador, back to their home world. Knowing they had no chance to make a stand they used black magic to trick ROM and scatter across the galaxy. ROM bound by his honor, swore not to reclaim his humanity until the Dire Wraiths were defeated.
Two Hundred years later, ROM arrives on Earth. The people are frightened by the 7 foot "robot" who shoots everybody with a "ray gun" that strangely did no harm (This was the Analyzer, to show ROM who was human and who was Dire Wraith). And with the second ray gun, turned some of the unlucky people to ash! (This was the Neutralizer, which banished the Dire Wraith into a dimensional portal called "Limbo" - but it sure looked like he was disintegrating people!)
These misunderstandings caused a lot of confrontations by Marvel's heroes, such as the X-Men and Fantastic Four. Eventually ROM is able to banish all Dire Wraiths from Earth.
Now if any of you know ROM, then you know I left out a lot, like ROM's love interest and his fate after banishing the Dire Wraiths, but there's just too much to be said there.
It was only later that I learned that the ROM comic book was written to promote a toy that Parker Brothers manufactured in 1979. My buddy actually had a ROM action figure buried in his garage, the shell was still for the most part intact, but the electronics were long dead. It looked terribly cheap, nothing like the cool Spaceknight I knew from the comics, a real disappointment. Heck, I don't even think the arms and legs moved.
Needless to say, the comic book outlived the toy, and Marvel continued to publish the comic book until 1986 when the license expired. Unfortunately this is why I don't expect to see ROM on the big screen anytime soon mingling with the heroes of the MCU. Though I had heard they were talking about adding him to the Hasbro movie universe with G.I. Joe and Transformers. But since they've been talking about that since 2015, I doubt we'll see that. Besides, ROM would be so much cooler in the MCU.
Were you already familiar with ROM Spaceknight? (The comic book or the toy)
Would you like to see him in movies? (MCU or Hasbro movies)
Do you know other instances where the "promotional material" became bigger than the actual product?
Let me know what you think in the comments below.
And as always, be sure to recommend!
