Robot Wars 1997 Interview: Jamie Hyneman with Blendo
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- Опубликовано: 9 фев 2025
- Interview with Jamie Hyneman of Mythbusters fame, with his heavyweight robot Blendo. Blendo was the most feared and most destructive robot at the early Robot Wars events, being the first spinner capable of dealing actual disabling damage to other robots.
Blendo had previously competed at the 1995 Robot Wars event, where it defeated Namreko 2000 and DoMore before being asked to leave the competition as it was too powerful for the arena to safely contain. The arena was then improved for the 1996 and 1997 events, and Blendo returned to fight in 1997.
Blendo fought two robots at the 1997 event.
Blendo versus Hercules: • Robot Wars 1997 Heavyw...
Blendo versus Punjar: • Robot Wars 1997 Heavyw...
Blendo was then asked to leave the event again, as the upgraded arena was still not able to contain it: • Robot Wars 1997 bonus ...
Blendo would later fight in the early years of BattleBots, but with much less success. The other robots had been improved to be able to effectively fight Blendo, and the BattleBots arena was strong enough to contain it safely.
Most of the footage for this interview was shot by Ronnie Katz and Arthur Sanders, who accompanied me to the 1997 event. Additional footage was supplied by other competitors at that event, we all traded copies of our raw footage after the competition. The raw footage then sat on a back shelf in my closet for a few decades until I rediscovered it a few years ago and had it digitized, then edited this and all the other videos on this playlist together. Apologies for the poor quality of the raw video, this is the best I had to work with.
"This whole thing is an exercise in simplicity and brutality." *chef's kiss*
"whats the shell, how thick is it?"
"its a chinese wok turned upside down"
I wonder how many he has bought over the years.
It looks to be a used which makes it all the better.
"listen i know it's 1500 Chinese woks but you don't know what I see." - Jamie circa 1990s
It’s a Wok ‘em Sock ‘em robot.
man even the weakest of the newer battlebots would sneeze that thing across the box.
jamie looks *exactly* the same
He doesn't age. The mustache is actually the living organism, Jamie's body is just a growth it's controlling.
Down to the white shirt and beret.
But he's not wearing a white shirt.
@@writerpatrick I typed from memory
Jamie is immortal
From Wikipedia:
"After two fights (against robots Namreko and DoMore) it was deemed too hazardous to compete by the event supervisors and the insurance company after throwing pieces of its opponents over the arena walls."
That description is amazing xD
The man caused the safety rules on a show where the house bot have *flamethrowers* to get rewritten. Nice trick.
@@VulpisFoxfire It made them come up with an arena with actual protective walls, which is a bit more impressive than just a rule change.
Also just fyi, this was the early American robot wars, not the British version that came later with house robots and such.
..Hmm. Huh.. Looks like I didn't know as much about the history and timing of Robot Wars vs. Battlebots as I thought, looking at the Wikipedia entries for both.
the supervisors, seeing that beast in action
'HES TOO DANGEROUS TO BE KEPT ALIVE!!!'
@@Adam-lw9il the UK competition has thick protective walls and even then part of a fractured blade penetrated the wall by maybe 30mm as it spun off.
Blendo's biggest problem stemmed from the inadequate confines of the arena.
exactly. the competition stage was not yet mature enough to handle blendo's raw power.
he should be allowed to re-enter now.
Thing looks like the Terminator
@@darkshadowsx5949 the robot was entered into early battlebots, and didnt fare well. everyone else surpassed blendo in the few years since it first competed.
@@mustang351c4 Didn't fare well? It won all of it's matches. Why speak when you know not what you speak of?
@@mustang351c4 Didn't fare well? It destroyed everything it was ever in the cage with and was awarded a special first place trophy.
You have no fucking clue what you are talking about lol
This guy is very knowledgeable, he should be part of a show that debunks rumors and viral videos to see if they check out in reality
Dude, yes! They could call it something like Legend Smashers but I think maybe they should hire a more squirrely fella to offset this guy's energy.
@@PikkaBird maybe they could hire a second team to handle smaller projects at the same time too
Legend smashers? Nah I prefer Lore Debunkers
@@rileymannion5301 as long as that second team has a redhead girl with a perfect smile.
That's oddly specific but I don't think a show like this would be a success. People love rumors and myths and get all defensive if you try to bust them. They'll prefer to watch some great documentary on history channel instead.
Its design is classic Hyneman.
The Hyneman is classic Hyneman.
scientific yet simple to make, maintain, and packed a punch…a shame that it wasn’t as successful as others but it revolutionized designs
@@bostonrailfan2427 From what I've seen, it would have been killer with better propulsion.
@@bostonrailfan2427 it actually won by default of being too brutal the two years they competed. It was flinging pieces of the competitors over the arena walls. lol.
If the propulsion is to blame, there's plenty of room for improvement!
Flat head engines are more budget than power makers.
Man literally found a hat one day and just never stopped wearing it.
only a douchebag would wear that hat longer than it takes to look and say "naw"
This interviewer is smart and not asking typical dumb questions!
Honestly that's partly due to editing, I edited out some of the stupider questions she asked. But she was also a fan with enough experience and exposure to the technology involves to ask a few of the right ones.
@@ellindsey000 smart man.
@@ellindsey000 even if she asked some dumb questions, she still asked genuinely smart ones, she didn't ask very basic questions like "how does it work" she specifically asked what kind of motor, particulars of that design, stuff a former weather girl wouldn't have the slightest clue to ask
I thought there was no such thing as a dumb question 😢
For the average person, yes.
For an interviewer that has a job: no.
The quality of that interviewer is amazing, they KNOW the tecnical questions to ask.
The simplicity is the brutality. Jamie Hyneman, what a legend. Thank you for everything you have done.
What is "the brutality"?
What does that mean, I wonder... THE simplicity is THE brutality... This needs to go on a t-shirt, on the front it says "The Simplicity" and on the back it says "is the brutality".
@@GraemeGunnConsidering it's purpose is to brutally destroy other robots I'd say it works pretty well
Simple = Robust
@@Eduardo_Espinoza Yep. The more complicated, the more potential points of failure.
i watched battlebots/robot wars as a kid, found blendo SUPER boring, but now that I am a grown-ass man I can appreciate how Jamie's simplicity and pragmatism made this boring, spinning, simple thing be such a fn beast.
also, Jamie was 100% born looking the way he looks today, my man ain't black but he still don't crack, amazing man
The more I find out about Jamie, the more I'm convinced he's some kind of mechanical savant. In an era where combat robotics was still in its infancy and few could build anything that could do more than drive across the arena and bump into its opponent before breaking, building something this complex and effective was a stroke of genius. Blendo was way ahead of the curve for anything made in the mid 90's.
The clutch system in particular reminds me of some remarks Adam Savage made in a recent video (the one about the giant Newton's cradle). He mentioned how Jaime was always able to come up with these unique and novel solutions to engineering problems they faced during the filming of Mythbusters. Indeed, getting a single gas motor to power not only Blendo's weapon but all of the drive is no small feat.
Look up Mark Setrakian also (if you're not already familiar) and his bots 'The Master', 'Snake', and others. Similarly his bots in these early Robot Wars looked way ahead of their time. Completely different style than Jamie, but both deserve huge respect.
It's genius because its defense is its attack, they're linked, no trade offs!
The whole point is that there's nothing complex about it. It has the absolute minimum number of pieces necessary, and it only does one thing. It's effective *because of* how simple it is - there's nothing really going on, it's just a shell and a motor, which minimizes the number of possible failure points. Everyone else was trying to be more complex, and that just introduced more things that could go wrong.
@@jameshill2450Good engineering is efficient engineering. The fact that he was able to make it so simple while answering all the issues it might encounter is proof of his genius.
@@jameshill2450 thats how life is. whether its computer programming or a robo deathmatch. whoever figures out the simplest most efficient solution will be miles ahead while everyone else slaps their forehead with a "why didn't i think of that" because it's usually not super advanced or anything... just smart
I love how Jamie doesn't age.
Cyborgs don't age
He reached Max level
give him another 30 years and you might start to see an additional forehead wrinkle lol
Mf has looked 45 for the past decade.
The male walrus can live for well over a century.
Interviewer: How do you make sure the flywheel spins smoothly?
Jamie: LARD.
C4?
Keep it simple knock head!
I watched a Tested video where Adam explained just how terrifying it was every single time they had to start Blendo's engine.
Like starting an airplane prop! 😅
I just saw that video too. Unfortunately Adam "forgot" to add that after winning so well in the 1995 and 1997 Robot wars, it then lost repeatedly in the 1999 battlebots...
@@Vousie I love how jamie says "I don't see that happening" when asked about getting under blendo, biohazard did it quite comfortably. Also inertia labs' Rhino was built for blendo, diamond shaped, halon gas weapon to choke out the petrol engine later replaced with a pneumatic ram to get into the guts of blendo without getting snagged, it even had a hammer tail in later fights to slow spinners down.
@@lewisb85bro NOBODY and I mean NOBODY cares 🤓
I was there. It send a shard into the safety plexiglass at the north side of the arena, and the thing remained embedded there. I think Blendo was politely told not to compete after that for safety reasons.
Me wondering how they had battle bots in the 90’s: “robotics wasn’t this advanced yet, how’d they get power?”
Jamie: “it’s a 5hp lawnmower engine”
im surprised ice engines were allowed to run on fluids in an arena lol
@@xxculpritexx It was the 90s. Lawn darts were a thing only a few years earlier.
Jaime made such a perfect battle bot, the organizers simply asked them to stop destroying the other bots and gave them top prize in their own special category.
Indeed. Adam confirmed it in a recent video.
They stopped him from competing with it because twice it ripped a bit off another robot and threw it in to the spectator stand, not because it was too good
@@jamesbisset9891 that is the correct answer, and confirmed in video by Adam Savage.
@@jamesbisset9891 I found it interesting they banned blendo considering they let Mark Pauline run his SRL robots during the interval. Some of which due to their size and power are more dangerous than anything entered into robot wars. But as someone pointed out mark probably has his own liability insurance which is why they were ok with it.
he reminds me of that guy on mythbusters
Legend has it on the day he was born he organized all the other babies in the maternity ward into alphabetical order
Jamie: "Chronological."
He still looked the same way he does now
He was born with a beret and a walrus moustache.
But his own alphabet, not that weak one everyone else uses.
2:19 "This whole thing is an exercise in simplicity and brutality" *Intelligent and badass*
Yeah. Classic.
Jamie’s engineering philosophy really applies the KISS principle (Keep it simple stupid) to full effect. It was always fun seeing the difference between his ideas and Adam’s. Adam’s ideas tended to be more complicated and I enjoyed his creations because they had flair, but Jamie’s builds were generally very simple and effective. Jamie always takes the most direct route to the solution. It’s possibly reflective of the fact that Adam has ADHD and tends to be a divergent thinker, one whom can see many alternative solutions. I think Adam finds making something cool as important as making something that works really well. Jamie’s philosophy is just to get it done. I think both modes of thinking are really important. Without Adam’s form of thinking there’d be no innovation and without Jamie’s form of thinking the world would be very inefficient.
Case in point: Adam's design for the lead balloon (I don't think Jamie could have come up with that origami system) and Jamie's tire ripper from Spy Car Escape 2 (it was far simpler in construction and yet far more destructive than every tire popper/shredder you see in spy movies).
The contrast in their creations was arguably my favorite part of the show
that's honestly why they complimented each other on the show so well
The Genius of Mythbusters was pitting Jamie's Autism against Adam's ADHD.
I find as an ADHD dude like Adam, that I often benefit from partnering with other neurodivergent people, and tend to gain a lot of insight from autistic folks who think in a different way than I do.
@@ldobehardcore do we know for sure that Jamie is ASD. All I can find is a bunch of listicles listing celebrities that might have ASD, but I don’t put much stock in that.
i don't see enough people talking about the excellent interview questions. direct, specific, open.
I love it when people put up these gems of videos. You my friend have saved this footage for generations. Thank you
Feels like I'm watching a lost clip of the myth busters 😃
Until RUclips randomly purges it
The huge grin on Jamie's face as he describes how its built warms my heart
I think this is the most animated I've ever seen Jamie get about anything that wasn't actively trying to kill him.
dont be so sure(about the actively trying to kill him part)
If This is his 1st time in the spot light, he'd of handled himself well 😄
@@Eduardo_Espinoza Sidebar: "he'd of" ? You're thinking of "he would have" contracted to "he would've" then shortened again to the rare double contraction "he'd've" which is a real, grammatically correct, informal case of two apostrophes working overtime, replacing six letters
@@BariumCobaltNitrog3n
True, thank you for catching that & that shorthand solution :)
"Have" not "of"
Walrus Rizz
Jamie does not age. His hair may age, but the man himself never changes. He looks *exactly* the same. *To this day.*
You do learn a new thing every day.
Someone should compile the adventures of Jamie Hyneman.
It’s insane. Has a degree in Russian linguistic, owned a pet shop when he was a teenager, worked as a dive operator, guys life is just a list of random occupations
Yup, sounds like a Walrus
Jamie Hyneman really never ages. He looks EXACTLY the same in this, as he did in the Mythbusters finale.
The algorithm is gonna live this one
Geez I miss '90s TV. Back when the hosts asked sensible questions and TV producers didn't assume that all their viewers have ADHD.
And there was no 10 min sob-story build-up for each of the contestants
I like how the assumption of ADHD applies to most of RUclips,, which has basically become TV. Sadly, people feast on energy and anxiety. When you learn about how to hook audiences, you learn devices, the tools that draw people's interest. Try these: "Good news/Bad news", "Ticking clocks", "Raising the stakes". If these are used effectively, you can feed people almost indefinitely. Mythbusters didn't manipulate, it naturally had all three. Each project had good news (it worked!), bad news (it broke), there were time crunches, and scaling up experiments raised the stakes in every case to judge a myth. Robot Wars has them, too. Battle is the ultimate high stakes.
Trust me, there was plenty of dumb TV back in the '90s too.
Geez. I remember the comercials was geared towards either Gen X'ers or ADHD. A commercial about nothing about the product and commercials so in you face that you would remember the name.
1997.... i was born that year lol
I'm glad Jamie has always been the way he is, I love him
Didn’t he pass away?
No, he's still alive.
Someone give this man a show! But make sure he has a sidekick to keep things lively.
& keep the look!
They should call it "Rumour Annihilator"
they should call it beef with false beliefs
How about "Fiction Fighters"?
Robot wars was bad ass in the 90s...I didn't know Jamie competed.
First that's a bid wok and secondly that interviewer asked good questions and seemed genuinely interested
bid wok
0:45 Look at the grin on that face.
It was so nice of Archimedes to reincarnate in time to have a show on Discovery during its golden age.
We had robot wars in the UK but i never knew about these early episodes Jamie pretty much laid down the blueprint for many of the most successful robots ever to compete from day one! I'd like to see him get involved again with a new or improved design.
This is footage from the 1997 Robot Wars event that was run in San Francisco in the USA, and is not part of the Robot Wars UK television show at all. The 1994-1997 Robot Wars events were non-televised events, and this footage was shot by a friend of mine and edited by me, and is not from an episode of the TV show.
Wild to see him smile and seem happy, I never want to become pessimistic as I grow old
The guy is an effing living legend. Imagine he writes a book about his life so far. I would buy it eyes shut... and then open them to be able to read, actually.
Its the upside-down wok for the hull that gets me LOL. Taking simplicity to the finest level. Man I would have loved to have been have met Jamie back in those days. What an interesting gentleman.
Oh man, seeing how slowly it spins up compared to the ones of today shows us how far hobbyist robotics have come.
True, but it's got a clutch on a *5hp engine*, remember. Probably not giving it the gas in that shot.
Also it was geared, guessing higher than 1 to 1
Also it was geared, guessing higher than 1 to 1
@@Eduardo_Espinoza It only turned at 400 RPM. That's significantly slower than the engine could turn.
Man never changed
Good interviewer
Everybody was smarter 30 years ago.
Watching this show back in the day I often forget just how big these things where.
I love how brutally efficient the design in. No worries about being flipped. No armor what so ever. So complicated grabbing or flipping mechanism. Just a giant spinning disc. All sides are covered, it's low enough where probably no one will be able to flip it and it's just carnage.
Jamie, hat and all, before mythbusters and probably years before that.
i miss the 90s. i wish i could go back to myself as a kid and tell myself to slow down and enjoy the best era ever. it was all down hill from 2000s on
The late 2010s is when life got worse.
Very glad I got to see Blendo compete. It was awesomely destructive.
2:11 The wise walrus shares his knowledge!
he revolutionized designs for Battlebots…so many spinners came after and copied the low height, slow speed, high impact spinners
Perhaps, but today full body spinners like that are almost an endangered species of the sport in favor of vertical and drum spinners.
i wish all interviewers were as smart as this one is. she had great questions.
Magic of editing.
Yeah she was smart!
you can see the manicial smile on his face during this interview
The video is of Jamie Hyneman talking through the basics of his 1997 centripetal battle bot. The quality of the video clues the audience into the fact that this video is both old, and likely surfacing for the first time in a long while. The comments section makes an effort to applaud the interviewer on her sensible questions.
Yep
This is a comment on a you tube video of A man talking about a robot he designed. It is simple yet brutal. The video is of poor quality but the comments on it are varied and interesting. Some comments resemble descriptions from a game about short violent alcoholics.
Adam was right! Footage of this does exist!
this was more than 25 years ago, yet he hasnt aged at all
i think that's the first time in 20 years that I've seen Jamie laugh
He saved memory space by removing, laughing
I know it’s a running gag but he actually laughs all the time in mythbusters show, or at least giggles
The simplest designs are often the most effective. Blendo reminds me of a catapult I built for High School. I built it out of offcut lumber and miscellaneous parts I had laying around in under an hour (I was very lazy in school back then). I definitely spent less time and money on my catapult than all the other contestants. One of the guys even had his dad help him build one out of riveted sheet metal and complicated mechanisms. But because I understood the logic of what would make it function well, my catapult significantly outperformed all the other catapults on the first attempt, despite its simplicity. When we launched the gummy bears my catapult's performance was relvatively insignificant, but when we moved on to the hackysacks, it almost put it through the art room's window, two stories up, and quite a ways away.
To me, Jamie seems like a man who appreciates making things function as simply as possible.
To quote a movie: “Jesus, didn't that guy ever have hair?”
Discipline!!
1997 Jamie looks exactly the same as 2017 Jamie. just with more pixilation
Blendo is a LEGEND, I'm so glad to see this!
Incoming: people who just watched TESTED
There must be a few hundred of us on the treasure hunt for all the old videos LOL. There's an older tested video where they actually interview Jamie about the robot. It was fun listening to him talk about it
Thanks RUclips recommendations!
This was over 25 years ago. Jamie hasnt aged a day.
Wish they still asked reasonable questions like this.
adam savage has recently made a video where he looks back on this period of time and it's awe-inspiring to hear adam savage of all people talk about this thing with a deep-rooted respect for the dangers involved in making and running it
Where the art of "making things go away" was honed. 😅
He looks exactly the same as he did 20 years later!
What a great reporter
it's 4:3, boys. You know it's legit.
this interview feels like she is a teacher testing her student.
at my time of viewing this video only has one dislike. who ever that was what were you expecting when you clicked on this? lol.
Thx for uploading
Thank you, algorithm.
anything it comes into contact with is just going to go away! understatement of the year!
brutally simple, simply brutal.
Most people don't realise this, but this was the guy who also co-starred in the TV show "Mythbusters".
Seriously, I think most people *DO* realize this. Jamie Hyneman is *definitely* well-known, by now, man. If you're North American & between the ages of 60 & 30, you'd have to be living under a fucking rock to not know he was co-host of Mythbusters.
@@DrachenGothik666 it's no fun when people take a joke seriously
Worst joke ever.
Blendo.... The long lost cousin of Bender and Flexo
Blendo is actually their great great great great great grandfather
Jamie was 12 years old in this clip. Amazing
The most dangerous mixing bowl ever constructed
Just came here from tested
This guy has been one thing his entire life. Same look, same voice, same demeanour.
Didn't knew Jamie did these kind of robots before.
He doesn't age
“An exercise of simplicity and brutality”
That pretty much sums up Blendo.
This is the type of old content I like on my recommendations.
I'm going to binge MB again because of this. To see more Jamie again 😆
"Anything it meets it makes it go away" Sounds like someone I know.
Watching through all these after Adam's latest video lol
Image quality has improved dramatically since then
Welcome to standard definition TV. We lived with it for 60 years.
I heard he almost named it Wok-It-To-Me.
"Here we have a rare spotting of the elusive Hyneman in his natural habitat."
"I'm not locked in this arena with you. You are locked in this arena with *me*"
Decades of the same beret and moustache. Respect
"An exercise in simplicity and brutality". That's Jamie
Jamie casually building a machine that was 15-20 years ahead of its time. Almost nobody was doing kinetic spinners, nobody was doing full body spinners and considering the state of lead-acid batteries and brushed motors at the time he picked the perfect power source.
Blendo could still be mildly competitive today if he were to replace the radio with modern spread spectrum 2.4ghz, remote starter and use modern AR steels instead of mild steel, lipos or brushless wouldn't even be needed since it's all powered off a single big ICE. It inspired the likes of Mauler, Mega/Gigabyte (tremendously successful) and basically any full-shell spinner afterwards and the design (along with Nightmare) forced improved standards for arena safety.
Now that there are "anti-tombstone" plows/wedges and the ICE having no chance running upside down (and maybe the clutch systems being relatively fragile) it would have some difficulties competing, but compared to any other bot from 96-97 would be turned to dust if it were to fight a modern heavyweight, Blendo at least would stand a chance.
One minor correction - Mauler actually predates Blendo. The first version of the Mauler competed in 1994 as a middleweight, and then the heavyweight Mauler competed at 1995, the same year Blendo first competed. Blendo did directly inspire Ziggo, the robot that dominated the lightweight class at Battlebots for a while, along with all other full body spinners afterwards.
@@ellindsey000 You are entirely correct, I should've said Ziggo instead of Mauler but my brain farted. Mauler before 5150 was more of a cagespinner than a full body like Ziggo/Blendo.
"Almost nobody was doing kinetic spinners" Almost nobody was doing robots at this point.
My end of the world survival team
#1- Jamie
What a legend
I wonder if we can get Jamie to narrate audiobooks
Wow, people used to shake hands back then
Imagine these on a battlefield.
jamie is such a genius.
Some say Jamie was born with a beret and mustache, we may never know the truth.
His mother knows.