Crossover Combat: Battle of the groups that are puns on the word “Android”

Well, that’s curiously specific.

Our contestants:

The Bandroids: The Bionic Six was really kind of wonderful in its distinctly 80s way. (See also, Spiral Zone) It was very much a product of its time, but it does have one of my favorite story arcs from any show in my childhood. At the end of the first episode, the main characters are captured, so their patron, Professor Doctor Amadeus Sharp, PhD (one of the all-time great character names, thank you very much) assembles a rescue team of second stringers and former guest stars. This legion of substitute heroes includes the robot rock stars called the Bandroids.

Truly Truly Truly Outrageous

From the Bionic Six Wiki: The Bandroids are androids, created by Dr. Bruce "Bad Brains" Huxter, designed to perform as a musical band. The Bandroids are guitarist Rivet Rick, keyboardist Techno Tex, bassist Metalhand, and drummer Bob. Each Bandroid has their musical instrument designed into their chassis and showcases some special ability: Rivet Rick can generate force fields, Techno Tex is equipped with two six-shooters, Metalhand can grow in size and has a jet pack, and Bob can generate electrical blasts from his drumsticks. The Bandroids perform in concert and are reported to have had four consecutive number one hits


Annedroids: If this TV show were a person, it would be Morgan Freeman talking about penguins. One of its goals is to educate children about STEM topics, and comforting and inoffensive in a way that only Canadian children’s television can be. The new girl in town in a precocious super-genius, and she builds robots and makes friends up in Canada. She has three main robots, Hand, Eye and Pal.


Randroids: All right. Debates about “Who would win in a fight?” tend to be even more subjective than most things on the Internet, and, like modern jurisprudence, chiefly involve working backwards to justify one’s favored outcome, all the while issuing protestations of one’s role as a neutral arbiter and declaring that the only possible interpretation of a sober reading of the evidence regarding a hypothetical matchup between Batman and Galactus will, of course, force any reasonable party to conclude that Batman would just throw batarangs at Galactus’s face until he decide to leave the earth alone forever.

I’m going to forgo even that slender fig leaf. It’s hard to overstate how much I hate Libertarians. When my seven-year-old daughter overheard the word and asked me what they were, I answered “People who like living in a civil society, but don’t like paying for it.” That’s perfect. So accurate, and so simple that a child could understand it. Several years ago, I first heard someone refer to Senator “Rand” Paul. I knew that that perennial Presidential candidate and part-time garden gnome Ron Paul was a hard core Glibertarian, and when I heard someone on TV say “Rand Paul”, I assumed that the speaker was just being snarky and facetiously referring to Ron Paul as Rand Paul. I didn’t realize that the man had actually named his son after Ayn Rand.

To Quote John Rogers:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

This is not an environment favorable to Libertarians, is what I’m saying.

We’ll rank our contestants in four categories.

Fighting: This is going to be a bit of a curb stomp isn’t it? Pal knows kung fu (or at least has some katas down), but only one team has rocket packs and shoots death rays. The Randroids learn how fickle the free market can be when they learn that the going rate to hire someone to fight against killer robots is out of their price range.

Round

Annedroids: 1

Bandroids: 2

Randroids: 0

Total

Annedroids: 1

Bandroids: 2

Randroids: 0

General Knowledge:Anne is a TV super genius. The Bandroids were never shown as particularly bright, but at best, Libertarian philosophy is intellectually dishonest sophistry. The word “scrub” has taken on a more specific meaning in recent years. Previously, it had been more or less synonymous with a bad player, but now it has increasingly come to mean a particular type of bad player, one who plays a game according to how they feel it should be rather than how it is. Consequently, their strategies are never effective as they feel they should be, and they blame everyone but themselves for this. Paul Ryan will answer “Ayn Rand” to every question, and sulk when he’s told that she didn’t write Othello.

Round

Annedroids: 2

Bandroids: 1

Randroids: -1

Total

Annedroids: 3

Bandroids: 3

Randroids: -1

Entertaining:Everyone knows that the Bandroids are the most popular singing robots of the 80s. (Sorry Chuck E. Cheese)

Who wants to get badgered?! 

Hand wows everyone with paper-rock-scissors artistry, but Anne accidentally say “A-boot” and alienates the American judge.

Rand Paul tries to deliver the I Am John Galt speech,  but he comes down with food poisoning from something he ate, because the free market no longer has any obligation to provide safe foods to its customers.

Round

Annedroids: 1

Bandroids: 2

Randroids: -1

Total

Annedroids: 4

Bandroids: 5

Randroids: -2

Passing the Voight Kampff Test:

The Bandoids and the Annedroids are, of course, actual robots, but they have many time more empathy than actual Randroids.

Round

Annedroids: 2

Bandroids: 1

Randroids: -10 

Total

Annedroids: 6

Bandroids: 6

Randroids: -10

There you have it, folks! The numbers don't lie! Annedroids and Bandroids beat Randroids, every time!