This astronaut walks along, pauses and lifts his radio to his mouth. Lights flash and a suitable noise is emitted before he walks forward again. Available in two colours: blue and red. They say that the red is harder to find but there's not much in it. His price has fluctuated in recent years, but this is always going to be an expensive, must-have robot.

The Rosko Astronaut bore the brunt of the new wave of reproductions and it took a hammering. It was inevitable that the large Mechanized Robot would be the subject of reproduction because availability always outweighs demand. The Rosko was bound to follow because it required relatively little reworking of the tools. (The same holds true for the large TN Tetsujin 28 battery op.)

You can easily detect a repro Rosko. The battery compartment contains the Osaka tin toy institute wording. More usefully, however, is the fact that originals have a two-piece vinyl arm structure with a very clear seam down the centre; repros have a one-piece molding with no seam. This lets you identify repros just from a picture.