Design and capabilities
Robo-Buster can fly and has Proton Cannons built into its arms. Smart assembled it after stealing a Ghost Trap holding a recently captured ghost and photographing the blueprints for the Ghostbusters' P.K.E. Meter, Ghost Trap, and Proton Pack.
Its apparent advantage over the Ghostbusters was that its Proton Streams not only caught ghosts but, with enough exposure, completely destroyed them, so the machine needed no trap and no Containment Unit. In reality it was not destroying the entities at all but disassembling their essence, which later recombined into a single giant ectoplasmic gestalt, the Spectral Mass.
In its commercial, Robo-Buster is described as carrying 600,000 volts of proton stream firepower and 20 megabytes of onboard memory, with energy sensors effective to a radius of five miles.34 The episode script lists the robot's height as seven feet and asks that the design not look like RoboCop.5
Personality
As a machine, Robo-Buster has little in the way of personality. It addresses ghosts before "destroying" them and proclaims in its advertisement, "I am not afraid of any ghost," but both behaviors read as programmed responses rather than character. It is closer to a piece of equipment than a character. Even so, after the robot finally shuts down, Peter Venkman remarks that it had a heart after all.
The slogan "I am not afraid of any ghost" paraphrases the hook of Ray Parker, Jr.'s theme from the first Ghostbusters film, "I ain't 'fraid of no ghost," a deliberate echo that further set the robot apart as non-human.
The Real Ghostbusters
The episode opens with the Ghostbusters and Slimer pursuing the Pig Snouted Demon through a building. Egon Spengler leads the team to an elevator saturated in slime; Winston Zeddemore attaches his hacker device to the button console to operate the elevator and drive the ghost out. The team opens fire and traps it. Back at the Firehouse, Slimer posts a No-Ghost logo on the elevator, signaling the bust complete.
At the Firehouse, the Ghostbusters meet Janine Melnitz's rich new boyfriend, Paul Smart, president of Grossjuck Industries, whose company has just opened a new high-rise off 40th Street. Egon Spengler is visibly uneasy about him. While the Ghostbusters are out on another case, Peter Venkman leaves a full Ghost Trap with Janine to dispose of. Smart distracts her with a fake coughing fit, steals the trap, photographs the team's other equipment, then leaves on a fabricated excuse about an urgent meeting.
Three weeks later, Smart invites the Ghostbusters to a press conference at Grossjuck Plaza and unveils Robo-Buster X-1. He releases the same ghost the team had caught weeks earlier and has the robot disintegrate it. Egon storms the stage to object that destroying an incorporeal entity is impossible, citing a basic law of ectoplasmic physics grounded in the conservation of mass; Janine empties a pitcher of water over Smart. Robo-Buster goes on to upstage the Ghostbusters publicly, beating them to a pyrokinetic entity in the 42nd Street subway station, where the team's Particle Throwers are melted, and tossing autographed photos to the crowd.
After a mocking Robo-Buster television commercial, Janine and Slimer confront Smart in his office. Smart summons Robo-Buster, which "destroys" Slimer in front of her. Egon doubts Slimer is truly gone and concludes the team needs the robot's blaster schematics to reverse the process and bring him back.6
Ray Stantz, Winston, and the others detour into a park, where they find the Spectral Mass, an enormous gestalt made of every ghost Robo-Buster had "destroyed," nearing critical mass. Robo-Buster attacks the mass but is enveloped and possessed by one of the vengeful entities, then turns on Smart's own office. Smart flees and leaves the Ghostbusters to deal with his creation. Egon deactivates the robot and the team wrangles the controlling ghost out of it.
To finish the fight, Egon connects everyone's packs to the captured robot and converts its blasters to the same negative ionizing output the Ghostbusters' Proton Packs use.7 With Robo-Buster's firepower added to their own, they trap the ghosts as they separate out of the mass. Peter lowers his thrower's power setting and fires directly into the mass; Slimer rides the stream out to safety. The team captures the rest of the mass and all of its constituent ghosts. Robo-Buster is fatally damaged when the mass punches it, and shuts down for good as Slimer is restored.
IDW comics
Several versions of Robo-Buster exist across the IDW continuity's multiverse, including a dimension where it is a sentient being from a planet of living robots. In Dimension 68-V, an elderly Ray Stantz built a Robo-Buster with his assistant Mike the Golem as backup for the Greenwich Village Ghostbusters, its systems powered by the ghosts it busts.
When Egon Spengler of the prime dimension recruits teams from across the multiverse to recover ghosts that escaped the Containment Unit, the 68-V Robo-Buster joins the effort. It gathers with the other teams at a warehouse hub in Crossing Over Issues #2 and #3 before being assigned to a field mission in Issue #4. Paired with Mike and the Ghostbusters of Dimension 35-N, it helps wrangle the Bone Dragon and deploys a Trap-Gate from its chest to transfer the ghost back to the Containment Unit. The unit then reports to Egon of Dimension 68-E that its supply of Trap-Gates is exhausted. Egon 68-E is taken aback that it can speak at all; Robo-Buster replies that it has been upgraded.89
Robo-Buster also makes several non-canon cameo appearances in other IDW titles. A miniature model appears on a table in Ghostbusters Vol. 1 Issue #14, its "unlawful entity" dialogue caption displayed alongside a Pig Snouted Demon photograph and the anti-Ghostbusters logo from its TV commercial. An Omni magazine cover in Ghostbusters Vol. 1 Issue #15 features the robot, and one of its claws appears on the end of a stick held by Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters Vol. 2 Issue #5. Page 43 of the Ghostbusters: Get Real trade paperback shows a portal containing three Robo-Busters. The 68-V version is featured on Cover A of Crossing Over Issue #7 and Cover B of Crossing Over Issue #8. Janine Melnitz also mentions Robo-Buster on page 2 of Transformers/Ghostbusters Issue #3.
Production notes
The episode "Robo-Buster" was written by Francis Moss and carried production number 175005, air episode number 096.1 It was recorded on July 11, 1988.1 Grossjuck Industries' name is an homage to the executive producers Michael Gross and Joe Medjuck. The episode introduces the pink-with-light-blue-trim Ghostbusters uniform that Janine wears several times across the rest of the series. Ecto-1 is wrecked over the course of the story.
The regular voice cast included Dave Coulier, Frank Welker, Maurice LaMarche, Buster Jones, and Kath Soucie, with Dan Gilvezan as a guest performer.
The subway station scene includes a background poster reading "No Contra Aid," a reference contemporary with the Iran-Contra Affair of 1986 to 1987. The snow visible at the start of the episode establishes a winter setting, with the three-week time skip placing the second half roughly in late November or December.
The Robo-Buster television commercial reuses designs from previous episodes: the Braided Hair Ghost appears, as does the female transmogrified Class 2 entity from "Look Homeward, Ray," and a red-tinted alternate of the Boogieman (the Boogieman's usual coloring is bluish-white).
The plot closely parallels the later "Who Ya Gonna Call?" arc of the IDW ongoing series, in which Ron Alexander steals Ghostbusters equipment schematics and markets ghost "destruction" rather than containment; in both, the destroyed ghosts merge into a single entity and the Ghostbusters must team up with their rival to stop it before the competitor goes out of business. A NOW Comics issue used a related premise with a robot named Ecto-X that Egon himself built, which began overshadowing the team until a Computer Demon possessed it and imprisoned the Ghostbusters inside the trap; Slimer freed them and they destroyed Ecto-X to trap the ghost. One comic panel erroneously refers to Ecto-X as Robobuster. The Ghostbusters 35th Anniversary: The Real Ghostbusters one-shot echoes the storyline in three places: page 7 shows a montage reminiscent of the rival-company premise in both "Ghosts R Us" and "Robo-Buster," page 15 features Ghostbusters technology being copied (from the future rather than the present), and page 16 depicts busted ghosts combining into a mega ghost, much as the Spectral Mass forms here.
References
-
Marsha Goodman (1988). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "Standing Room Only" (1988).
-
Marsha Goodman (1988). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "Robo-Buster" (1988).
-
The Real Ghostbusters (2009). Volume Four Disc Five, "Robo-Buster" (1988). Time Life Entertainment. Robo-Buster: "I am armed with 600,000 volts of proton stream firepower and 20 megabytes of on-board memory."
-
The Real Ghostbusters (2009). Volume Four Disc Five, "Robo-Buster" (1988). Time Life Entertainment. Robo-Buster: "My energy sensors have an effective radius of five miles."
-
Moss, Francis (2009). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection, Volume Four Disc Five, "Robo-Buster" Script, p. 11. CPT Holdings, Inc.
-
The Real Ghostbusters (2009). Volume Four Disc Five, "Robo-Buster" (1988). Time Life Entertainment. Ray Stantz: "What we need are the designs for Robo-Buster's blaster circuits then we can figure out how to reverse the process and bring Slimer back."
-
The Real Ghostbusters (2009). Volume Four Disc Five, "Robo-Buster" (1988). Time Life Entertainment. Egon Spengler: "I'll need your Proton Packs. I'm going to convert the robot's throwers into negative ionizing ones."
-
Ghostbusters: Crossing Over Issue #4 (2018). IDW Publishing, p. 18. Egon Spengler of 68-E: "I was led to believe you couldn't speak."
-
Ghostbusters: Crossing Over Issue #4 (2018). IDW Publishing, p. 18. Robo-Buster: "I have been upgraded."
