Milton Bradley’s Big Trak
Rating: 7/10, Educational and fun. What defines a robot? Does it have to look like a humanoid or a recognizable animal, or does it simply have to be a machine that can execute a series of instructions? Milton Bradley’s Big Trak falls into that latter category, and while primarily marketed as a toy, it could also be considered one of the first commercially successful robots, as it featured a keypad on top that could be used to program where the six-wheeled vehicle would drive and what it would do (fire its pretend blaster, pause for a certain number of seconds, etc.). You could chain up to 16 commands together, and the toy taught the fundamental concepts of programming before the personal computer was a thing.
