We Built a Robot from Scrap …Then It Changed Everything
Or, why the next big thing in children’s storytelling might just come from a Cold War spy camera, a kitchen table, and a bit of copper wire.
It’s funny what you find when you rummage through a box of junk.
Most people see scrap, old screws, worn-out springs, odd bits of wire that have clearly outlived their usefulness.
Andy sees potential. (I saw a fire hazard, but let’s not dwell on that.)
That’s how Weebert was born. Out of scrap, out of nowhere, and out of a moment when we really needed a bit of magic.
Andy, my husband, creative half, and former army helicopter engineer, was building robot sculptures to help with his mental health. He wasn’t trying to launch a children’s brand. He was trying to feel better. And so, on a cold afternoon in Shrewsbury, he picked up a Cold War spy camera, a tangle of copper wire, two opera glass lenses, and built a robot no bigger than a can of beans.
Weebert.
Weebert had this wonderfully puzzled face, like he’d just stumbled into the world and couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. I fell in love immediately.
(With Weebert. Andy was already a done deal.)
The thing is, there’s a strange power in tiny things. Weebert didn’t speak. He didn’t move. But he had presence. He lookedlike he had stories to tell.
So I sat down and wrote one.
Then I read it to our grandchildren, and they didn’t just sit and listen politely. They leaned in. They laughed. They asked questions. Then they got out the recycling and started building their own robots. That was when I knew we were onto something.
We hadn’t just made a robot. We’d made a doorway. A kind of magical little permission slip for children to imagine, explore, and play.
Now, a year later, Weebert’s World has grown. Not into a giant tech empire. Not into a marketing machine. But into something that lives at the intersection of nostalgia and possibility.
We’ve got Digbert (he loves gardening), Tweebert (she can fly using a propeller on her back), and Hubert (he wears a 3-speed umbrella on his head, don’t ask). We’ve written adventure stories that unfold right on the kitchen table. We’ve built an outreach programme that gets kids building Berts out of scrap, helping them realise you don’t need expensive kits to invent. You need curiosity.
It turns out, the tools of engineering can also be the tools of storytelling. Springs. Cogs. Imagination.
Weebert isn’t just a character now, he’s the frontman of something quietly big. Something that says:
“You don’t need permission to create, you just need a bit of scrap and the belief that you can.”
Here’s the exciting (and slightly terrifying) part: we’re now building Weebert’s World as a stop-motion animation series. A children’s TV show with handcrafted Berts, warm stories, and no digital gloss. Think Bagpuss meets Wallace & Gromit in a workshop with half a dozen jam jars full of screws.
We’re doing it from the kitchen table, with hope, glue, and a lot of tea.
And somehow, people believe in it. Investors, creatives, teachers, even BBC Radio Shropshire. (We’ve been on air. I still can’t believe it.)
So why am I writing this?
Because I want you to know something simple:
✨ The next big idea doesn’t have to come from Silicon Valley.
✨ It might come from a couple in their sixties, sitting in a Shropshire kitchen, gluing bits of copper wire to old camera parts.
✨ It might come from a child, bored on a rainy day, who finds a spring and says, “What if…”
If this made you smile, or cry, or remember what it felt like to believe in anything with a bit of imagination, then share it.
With your friends, your mum, your grandkids. Share it with the part of you that still believes.
Because Weebert’s World isn’t just a story.
It’s a spark.
And sometimes, one tiny spark is all it takes.
Lotty x
