Zoltar breakdancing! Everybody rumba, rumba rumba. Zoltar, that fortune-telling guy you thought was stuck in his booth,
went mobile and won the Motorized Float prize in the
2009 Coney Island Mermaid Parade last summer.
Some of us probably
remember one of his alter egos from the 1970s animated
Battle of the Planets, who also went by the names
Berg Katse and
Mala Latroz, and whose quasi hermaphroditic nature was obfuscated in the American adaptation by
explanatory 7-Zark-7 monologues (1:40 - 2:40). Perhaps one or two of us even have an
action figure lying around. But that Zoltar wannabe had serious identity problems, and his life of ambigusexual villainy ended in tragic suicide.
Even more of us probably
remember him from
that scene in
Big where a twelve year old
kid made a wish and got
what he asked for.
(I doubt more than a small majority have seen him in Big - The Musical).
But Zoltar may be most fondly remembered as the six-foot-five, acquisitive and witty
animatronic soothsayer-in-a-box who likes to hang out at
piers boardwalks. Here,
he is silent on the question of whether or not some dude should hire a prostitute.
This cute girl lingers, intrigued, over her fortune while trying to ignore the douche cameraman. Here, Zoltar
disseminates advice at the beach. This videographer prefers a
horizontal Zoltar. This Zoltar is
sort of interactive.
He may not be
the only enterprising
fortune-telling-machine around, but he is probably the first to become mobile and
win a
Motorized Float contest using a
modified Segway. Lots of work went into this project. Here you can see how the float was assembled (
part 1,
part 2 - breakdancing bit is at 9:22), and here is a
test demonstration.
Want a Zoltar of your own but don't want to spend $6,600 at
Characters Unlimited Inc, or $5,500-$8,500 at
ZoltarMachine.com (See how he's made: artists at work, woodwork, faces, hands & eyes), or $8,999.95 at
Hammacher Schlemmer, or $7,495.00 for
this eBay seller's auction? Well, it seems Zoltar has fallen on hard times and is offering himself to denizens of the Washington state area, as noted on
his Facebook fan page.
Still can't afford him? Then get yourself a $139
Chumby Guts (some assembly required) or a $120
Chumby One and add the
Zoltar widget to one of your channels.
Still too cheap for Zoltar? Then
virtualize him (free registration required) and enjoy the advice and truisms via that widget for $0.
