Now the truth can be told!
In the late 1970s, Nelvana made some clunky animated TV specials that aired in Canada and the US. I remembered one of them, and was astonished to see it again after 30 years, considering it seems to be the source material from which Pixar shamelessly stole from for WALL-E!
The cartoon is called Romie-0 and Julie-8.
The idea of two robots falling in love, the "boy" robot having to clean up an entire garbage world, and lots of fat people, are all here!
The plot is as follows:
Two rival companies make "the perfect robot". A company run by fat men (pic #1) makes a boy robot and a company run by fat women (#2) makes a girl robot. Both robots meet at the trade show (#3) and the girl robot is nearly bought by a real creepy guy. However, the robots are seperated once the show is over (#4) and they discover they are in love with one another.
They both run away and walk the streets in search of fortune. It turns out, however, the robots can't seek their destiny if everything on the planet is humanoid-centric and doesn't cater to robots, so they meet with the creepy guy in a dingy back alley and agree to take his job. They zoom off to his planet.
The female CEO is being massaged while eating lots of fattening goods on a conveyer belt (#5, I kid you not) when the "robot missing" alarm goes off. Suspecting foul play, she contacts the male CEO who is in the shower; who puts on a towel and they argue about what happened to their robots on the balcony (#6). Finally they figure out where they went and decide to follow them. The female CEO jumps into the male's spaceship and they take off in pursuit.
Meanwhile, the planet turns out to be full of garbage that needs cleaning up (#8). The creepy guy (#7) is saying life isn't so hard after all, and convinces Romie-0 to start the massive cleaning job. He finds a nice robotic dress for Julie-8 in the meantime (notice she isn't expected to do any of the work? Rather sexist of them, assuming the robots actually have genders).
The creepy guy leaves other robots in charge, which end up capturing the CEOs in a net (wish I'd screengrabbed that one) and the star-crossed robots save the day by having to, er, carry their bosses to safety. They make it (barely), creepy guy loses his shirt (I forgot how), the bosses fall in love (#9), the end.
Music by John Sebastian.
I was going to find a good place to upload this thing so everyone could see it, but it proved impossible owing to the enormous size of the file and lack of time to upload. Apparently it only exists in old VHS copies from the 1980s. There was a torrent 4 months ago, which is now no longer being seeded.
In the late 1970s, Nelvana made some clunky animated TV specials that aired in Canada and the US. I remembered one of them, and was astonished to see it again after 30 years, considering it seems to be the source material from which Pixar shamelessly stole from for WALL-E!
The cartoon is called Romie-0 and Julie-8.
The idea of two robots falling in love, the "boy" robot having to clean up an entire garbage world, and lots of fat people, are all here!
The plot is as follows:
Two rival companies make "the perfect robot". A company run by fat men (pic #1) makes a boy robot and a company run by fat women (#2) makes a girl robot. Both robots meet at the trade show (#3) and the girl robot is nearly bought by a real creepy guy. However, the robots are seperated once the show is over (#4) and they discover they are in love with one another.
They both run away and walk the streets in search of fortune. It turns out, however, the robots can't seek their destiny if everything on the planet is humanoid-centric and doesn't cater to robots, so they meet with the creepy guy in a dingy back alley and agree to take his job. They zoom off to his planet.
The female CEO is being massaged while eating lots of fattening goods on a conveyer belt (#5, I kid you not) when the "robot missing" alarm goes off. Suspecting foul play, she contacts the male CEO who is in the shower; who puts on a towel and they argue about what happened to their robots on the balcony (#6). Finally they figure out where they went and decide to follow them. The female CEO jumps into the male's spaceship and they take off in pursuit.
Meanwhile, the planet turns out to be full of garbage that needs cleaning up (#8). The creepy guy (#7) is saying life isn't so hard after all, and convinces Romie-0 to start the massive cleaning job. He finds a nice robotic dress for Julie-8 in the meantime (notice she isn't expected to do any of the work? Rather sexist of them, assuming the robots actually have genders).
The creepy guy leaves other robots in charge, which end up capturing the CEOs in a net (wish I'd screengrabbed that one) and the star-crossed robots save the day by having to, er, carry their bosses to safety. They make it (barely), creepy guy loses his shirt (I forgot how), the bosses fall in love (#9), the end.
Music by John Sebastian.
I was going to find a good place to upload this thing so everyone could see it, but it proved impossible owing to the enormous size of the file and lack of time to upload. Apparently it only exists in old VHS copies from the 1980s. There was a torrent 4 months ago, which is now no longer being seeded.
