Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot!!

I've become something of a fan of YouTube, a website where people can post video clips. There doesn't seem to be alot of regard for copyrights - movie clips and commercial music videos are some of their wares. The service is totally free (to watch anyway - I'm not sure how posting works). There's a fair bit of unusual, eyebrow-raising, and just obscene content, but you are (usually) warned beforehand and given a chance to okay or dismiss the clip before it plays.

I found a real treasure from my childhood - it is a show I was calling Giant Robot. The show was Japanese, and was shown in the US with a (barely-)English soundtrack. It's about a little kid that gets put in charge of a giant robot, whom he controls by speaking into a wristwatch microphone. The robot has jet engines strapped to his back so he can fly, and missiles that load into his fingertips to look like fingernails before he launches them. (Note the groovy 'arm flipping' he does to load his missiles). He's also armed with some kind of sonic wave / heat ray / laser that comes out of his eyes, and a flamethrower that comes out of his head and aims at nothing in particular. Anyway, boy and robot square off against an assortment of giant monsters and aliens - the whole thing is very 50's Godzilla. Oh, and the best part - the evil alien leader (who crash-landed on Earth and just decided to conquer it while he was here) - was a squid-headed guy that scared me to DEATH when I was 8.

The show's correct title is 'Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot'

This link is for a spanish posting that shows a short 1:15 minute clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1tbt-jML_s


Funny to find a childhood memory after all these years.