Robot Wars 1997 Interview: Jamie Hyneman with Blendo

Interview with Jamie Hyneman of Mythbusters fame, with his heavyweight robot Blendo. Blendo was the most feared and most destructive robot at the early Robot Wars events, being the first spinner capable of dealing actual disabling damage to other robots.

Blendo had previously competed at the 1995 Robot Wars event, where it defeated Namreko 2000 and DoMore before being asked to leave the competition as it was too powerful for the arena to safely contain. The arena was then improved for the 1996 and 1997 events, and Blendo returned to fight in 1997.

Blendo fought two robots at the 1997 event.

Blendo versus Hercules:    • Robot Wars 1997 Heavyweight match: Bl...  

Blendo versus Punjar:    • Robot Wars 1997 Heavyweight match: Bl...  

Blendo was then asked to leave the event again, as the upgraded arena was still not able to contain it:    • Robot Wars 1997 bonus video: Blendo w...  

Blendo would later fight in the early years of BattleBots, but with much less success. The other robots had been improved to be able to effectively fight Blendo, and the BattleBots arena was strong enough to contain it safely.

Most of the footage for this interview was shot by Ronnie Katz and Arthur Sanders, who accompanied me to the 1997 event. Additional footage was supplied by other competitors at that event, we all traded copies of our raw footage after the competition. The raw footage then sat on a back shelf in my closet for a few decades until I rediscovered it a few years ago and had it digitized, then edited this and all the other videos on this playlist together. Apologies for the poor quality of the raw video, this is the best I had to work with.