i saw the exhibit and was impressed to see that Rube Goldberg had basically done “snappy answers to stupid questions” way before al jaffe in mad magazine.
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Technically not a “breakfast machine,” unless you consider Tom wanted to make Jerry his breakfast:
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those movies came out the same year.
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure isn’t the only movie with a Rube Goldberg breakfast machine
but it is the best movie.
(yes that’s a complete sentence).
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Luckily, the heinous Wallace and Gromit omission was corrected.
Try this more recent one. I ROFL every time.
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As Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was written by Ian Fleming it should really be a Heath Robinson breakfast machine.
I can remember reading a children’s story many years ago (60s or 70s) with wonderful drawings where a young boy had an automated bedroom that would wake him up and clothe him and deposit him at the breakfast table similar to the Wallace and Grommit scene. There were all sorts of other great contraptions too. One day he got into bed the wrong way and all sorts of mishaps and zany antics transpired.
I thought it was by William Pene du Bois, but when I searched for it a few years back I didn’t turn up anything. Does this sound familiar to anybody? Off to look for it again!
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Captain Kangaroo was sponsored by Kellogg’s for a while, and there was a breakfast making machine on commercial breaks that assembled a bowl of cereal by pouring out the cereal and milk and adding sugar.
One of the houses in The 21 Balloons by duBois was a mad inventor’s house where everything was automated, including food prep.
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Came for this.
Left in wrong trousers.
Also, penguins! Sneaky buggers!
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Since the calendar shows a month with only 29 days, that must mean that Gromit’s birthday is February 12. Since February 29 of that year fell on a Saturday, it must be 1992.
Kind of a shame heath robinson is being lost to history a bit, i mean nick park of aardman animations would surely have been inspired by robinson’s contraptions as a young boy rather than goldberg.
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At least one of the ‘Ernest’ Movies had a Rube Goldberg device in his house but I can’t remember if it made breakfast.
Who needs a breakfast machine when you can have persistent hallucinations of normally inanimate objects coming alive to help you, as in “Betty’s Bizzy Bee”?
He’s much more well known in the UK, whereas Rube Goldberg isn’t that well known over here. So yes, the machines in Wallace and Gromit are not ‘Rube Goldberg machines’, they’re ‘Heath Robinson contraptions’. It’s just a regional difference, in the same way that in the UK John Logie Baird is known as the inventor of the television, not that guy from Futurama.
I’m sure Nick Park read the Professor Branestawm books as a kid, same as I did (Robinson was the illustrator for them).
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Was he sort of tousle-haired blonde in a style reminiscent of “The Little Prince” illustrations?
I have a very vague feeling I’ve seen something like this in a vintage comics omnibus. Collected from old periodicals, I think. Was vintage even when I found it in the 70s.
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I’ll have to take a look and see if that’s it. That was my initial thought but when I looked at some of the drawings it didn’t look right. But maybe that’s a several decades worth of memory degradation having an effect!
Not that I recall. It was all line drawings and not colored, but more of an etching cross hatching style than Little Prince. I will try to find an online version of 21 Balloons and see if that’s it. Thanks for the idea though.
why are we limiting this to “breakfast” machines. here’s a clearly rube goldberg inspired scene from Goonies: https://youtu.be/SwaTKYJSDaw
Glad to see that you remembered the crackahs. There is a series of Wallace and Gromit shorts, Wallace and Gromit’s Cracking Contraptions. One of them is the Autochef.
Alexandre le bienheureux, (very happy Alexander) a French film from 1968, has a breakfast scene, complete with an automatic dressing machine.
I think you can find it on YouTube
