ROM the Space Knight

Rom was a toy co-created by Scott Dankman, Richard C. Levy, and Bryan L. McCoy. It was sold to Parker Brothers, and was the inspiration for the comic book series Rom: Spaceknight. The toy was originally named COBOL, after the programming language, but was later changed to Rom, after ROM (read-only memory), by Parker Brothers executives. The toy set a precedent for the game publishing company, which up until that time had only ever produced board games. As this was a new venture for the company, and given that electronic toys were still very new, a decision was made to produce the figure as cheaply as possible. As a result, the final product had very few points of articulation, and twin red LEDs served as Rom's eyes instead of the originally envisioned green, which were more expensive to produce. Not long after its debut, Rom appeared in the corner box of the cover of Time magazine's December 10, 1979, issue. It was featured in the interior article, "Those Beeping, Thinking Toys," which decried Rom's lack of articulation and predicted it would "end up among the dust balls under the playroom sofa".