A young boy’s super-cool Robocop Halloween costume earned him a big surprise in the mail: an autographed photo from none other than the real Robocop himself.
A young lad from Detroit was determined to dress up as a robot for Halloween. But not just any robot: He was going to be Robocop. Fortunately, the kid has a pretty awesome and ingeniously creative father, who slapped together a fine, ridiculously cute Robocop costume from little more than recycled plastic jugs and a child’s wetsuit he picked up on eBay. Fully assembled and ready for action, they hit the streets of Detroit!
They toured around, snapping photos and keeping the peace, and eventually running into a few old-fashioned Detroit Police officers, who posed for a couple of pictures and let him sit in their car. The cops, it turned out, were protecting a shooting location for some unknown film or television show; during the conversation someone from the shoot came over, snapped a photo of the kid in his costume and said he was going to mail it to Peter Weller, the actor who originally played Robocop and, he claimed, a good friend of his. And that was that.
Until a few days ago, when a surprise package arrived in the mail containing an autographed picture of the real Robocop, with the message, “Gram – You are certainly the best Robocop of all time!” In fitting fashion, he – that is, Weller – also added the classic Robocop mantra, “Stay out of trouble.”
“Gram believes the real Robocop sent this to him, because that’s exactly what we told him,” the boy’s father wrote on his blog. “It’s already framed and on his bedroom wall.”
It’s been 23 years since Robocop, Clarence Boddicker, Dick Jones, Bob Morton and the rest of the gang got together to make one of the smartest action classics of all time, which makes Weller’s gift “especially generous” because, as Gram’s dad said, he’s got to be tired of his inescapable association with the character. One other downside: Gram’s sister was wickedly jealous. “Eventually she got over it,” he wrote, “and had to agree that getting mail from Robocop was about the coolest thing ever.”
I’d have to agree.