ROBOTS IN TELEVISION For over 65 years now robots have been appearing on TV starting in 1935 with "Phantom Empire". Robots on TV have been far more popular in cartoons than in live action programs. Part of the reason for this is that it is far easier and less expensive to have a realistic cartoon robot than to build from scratch several full-sized, fully working robots. We have seen robots in cartoons as early as the 1960s with "The Jetsons" and then later on with the fantastically popular "Transformers" series. More recently robots have been in such shows as the computer animated "ReBoot" and the live action "Power Rangers".