A specially designed t-shirt featuring M.K. Perker’s “Robot” toy, exhibited at the Istanbul Toy Museum, rendered in his signature style. Made from 100% cotton.

The Story of the Toy: The word “robot” was first used in a work by Czech writer Pavel Josef Šofčík in the 1920s. Sunay Akın draws attention to The Wizard of Oz in discussing the origin of the robot. The tin man in this fairy tale is nothing more than an early example of a robot. The first robot toy, Atomicman, was produced as a wind-up toy in Japan in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Production was halted with the outbreak of World War II but resumed in the 1950s.