UPPER East Sider Robert Lesser still remembers his very first time in Boston, 20 years ago.”I knew on the spot I was hooked,” he recalls.
“It feels like love at first sight. You meet this pretty girl, you fall in love with her. You know, that’s it. When I saw Robby the Robot, I knew there would be more [robots]. I had no control.”
That was the day he bought his first. Today, his robot collection is on display at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, where it’s been appraised at more than $1 million, says Lesser.
Some might say this man is obsessed with robots. Not that it’s anything new.
As a teen growing up in Chicago, Lesser saw the classic 1956 sci-fi flick “Forbidden Planet” – starring Robby the Robot – over and over and over.
At one point, after nine viewings in a row at the State Lake theater, Lesser recalls, “I was asked to leave and told, ‘You don’t pay rent here.'”
A retired store sign salesman, Lesser, 67, has been living in a rent-controlled apartment on the Upper East Side since his Windy City firm sent him here in 1965.
He’s even broken through to the rent-stabilized apartment next door, where his nearly 300 robots and space toys stay when they’re not on the road.
“It’s not big enough,” he says. “An airplane hangar wouldn’t be big enough.”
Robots are an expensive habit – and rich techie collectors are driving up demand, Lesser says.
He paid $1,200 for Robby, though it stands only 14 inches tall. “I must have paid double what it was worth because I was so out of control,” he says.
The creatures in his collection come mostly from Japan, circa the 1950s and 1960s. They’re made of lithographed tin and have names like Mr. Atomic, Missile Robot, Battery Operated Remote Control Mr. Mercury and Machine Man, which was sold for $77,000 at Sotheby’s a couple of years ago. Lesser has paid as much as $15,000 for a rare, silver Robby the Robot.
“When the Japanese brought the prototypes of the toy Robby over here to the Toy Fair in 1956, they were in silver. And the American public said, ‘Wait a minute, buddy. Take a look at the movie. He’s black, not silver.’ So that became a very rare robot – like a rare postage stamp or coin.”
Tobor (robot spelled backwards), the life-size automaton that greets visitors to the Brooklyn Museum exhibit, began life in the 1950s, outside variety stores, according to Lesser. Inside is a reel-to-reel tape recorder that plays “The War of the Worlds” for a quarter.
But kids would frequently break the machine’s arms, Lesser says, so very few were made. He paid $2,000 for his.
Lesser says he’ll stop at nothing to acquire a desired machine.
About 30 years ago, he got a call from a dying man in Williamsport, Pa., who had some Buck Rogers collectibles – and a severe case of angina.
“I got on the bus and I’m going to Williamsport, Pa., and it’s a blizzard. The bus driver said, ‘You’re the only person on the bus. I think I’d better turn back.’ I said, ‘No, you’re not. If I have to use physical force, you’re not. I have to get to Williamsport because this guy may die before I get there.'”
Lesser got through the snow. “The guy is so sick, he’s leaning against the wall and he’s got these Buck Rogers items in his hand – a Buck Rogers gun, Buck Rogers solar map and other items he’d saved as a child. So he sold them to me and sort of collapsed into a chair.
“And then I’m trying to get back home and the blizzard was still raging. But I got the merch. I don’t think the man lasted more than a few more days.”
Lesser recently pursued a toy version of the Iron Giant, from the animated movie of the same name. “I had to hand-wrestle a much older man – he was on a cane -for the last Iron Giant at the Warner Bros. store. I got it.”
When he’s not collecting, Lesser writes. His “Chicago Pulp,” two one-act plays, is being staged at the Producers Club II (616 Ninth Ave.) Dec. 6 to 17.
Over time, Lesser admits he’s lost touch with some family members, who consider his obsession odd. But he’s never been tempted to sell.
“I guess it’s like an Arab prince who has a harem of teenage brides,” he says. “Which one do you get rid of first? No, I love all those pretty creatures.”
“Robots and Space Toys: The Robert Lesser Collection,” is on view at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, 200 Eastern Parkway, through Jan. 28. For more information, phone (718) 638-5000.