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Bulgarian artist’s robot cartoon warned us 38 years ago

Ellsworth Toohey
Oct 13, 2025
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In this 1987 cartoon by Bulgarian artist Milen Radev, an engineer operates a wireless remote control to command a towering robot— but the robot’s mechanical hands grip puppet strings attached directly to the engineer himself. Who’s really in control?

The image appeared in Szpilki (Polish for “Pins”), a satirical magazine founded in 1935 by Zbigniew Mitzn…

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