The Wall-E merchandising train is alive and kicking. We told you about the ultimate Wall-E and we really like that one, much like the Wall-E mp3 player. Well, they’ve taken it a bit further with the Wall-E and Eve interactive toys.

Now Wall-E and Eve get the chance to get all freaky with each other. InterAction Eve has light-up eye expressions, arm movements, and sound effects. She’ll respond when you talk to her or push her along. She even has a flying mode, where you can lift her up and hear authentic blasts and whooshes. Needless to say Wall-E will interact with her.

What’s the one thing we need more of in the 21st century? If you said that we need more robots performing daring feats, you’re in luck. It just so happens that on Saturday, the Panasonic Evolta battery robot, a 17-centimeter tall super-hero looking bot and all around bundle of cuteness, scaled a 500-meter cliff at the Grand Canyon.

It was a publicity stunt of course, to show-off the endurance of the Evolta AA alkaline batteries. The Guinness Book of World Records already recognizes the batteries as the longest-lasting of their kind. The robot, powered by just a pair of Evoltas, pulled itself up 530 meters of rope, finally reaching the top after 6 hours and 45 minutes. I don’t know about you, but if you show me a cool robot doing cool stuff I’m gonna buy your batteries.

In his attempt to build a better tribble thing, roboticist Steve Yohanan has come up with a Haptic creature that looks like a tribble with bunny ears attached. One that raises the creep factor, by having no facial features. This robot uses touch feedback as it’s only way to communicate.

It’s full of pressure sensors and the need to lull you into a false sense of safety with lots of fur and no face. It will be able to sense how you touch it or stroke it, and it will respond with breathing motions, ear wiggles or purring. What we have here is a fancy fur slipper that’s been sewn up after installing some gear. I just wish I worked for the company, because I’d find a huge bin full of these things and recreate the classic trek image above.

This is how the future was supposed to be. While you are just sitting around laughing it up, your robot slave is busy doing all the gruntwork. Things like mowing the lawn for instance. This little guy seen in the accompanying video works his metal ass off, never complaining.

He’s entertaining to watch as he’s doing your chore. He even has to stop at one point to wipe the sweat from his brow. He clearly doesn’t get any respect. He just does his job. It’s all well and good until he runs into the doghouse.

Sometimes the coolest gadgets in Sci-Fi are not gadgets at all. But robots. Here’s a look at some of the most memorable robots from sci-fi in no particular order. It’s not a complete list. Think of it more as a walk down memory lane. Because geeks love Sci-Fi and Sci-Fi has a long history of loving robots.

Everybody’s favorite whacked out, dancing, escape pod looking robot from Sony is finally making its way from Japan to the USA. The small egg-like bot can blast tunes from it’s built-in speakers, move its cute little flippers to the music and spin around. Is it useful? Hell no. And we like it that way.

The bot comes with pre-choreographed routines for songs. (“Also Sprach Zarathustra,” Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend”, Earth Wind and Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland”) You can also use the choreography software to create dances for own tunes. The 2GB bot can be had in black or white, and found online or in Sony stores for $400.

If you live in Tokyo chances are you’ve seen the invasion of lifesize Coca-Cola robots wandering the streets. “Drink human, or I’ll pop your puny head”. Now you can own your own miniature version of the wandering Coke robot to keep you company on your desktop.

Nothing says robotics like a caffeinated robot. When you combine Japanimation and Coca-Cola vending machines, the result is supreme geekiness. If regular Coke isn’t your thing, there’s also a black Coca-Cola Zero robot waiting for you.

Resistance is futile. Your crumbs will be assimilated and absorbed with these little robo vacuums. Which is appropriate, since these little guys look a bit on the obese side. They should probably do some exercise. But they can’t.

They don’t do anything but suck up your crumbs. Their arms don’t even move much. But there’s no better way for a geek to clean up after himself, then to move these things over his desk while making robot noises and talking into a fan for the voice. It runs on two AA batteries and comes in three different colors. At $14.99 these are too cute not to get one or two.

We’ve seen tons of spider robots throughout the years in all kinds of Sci-Fi flicks. Now they’re about ready to head from the big screen to creepy reality. BAE Systems is getting $38 million from the US Army Research Lab to fund the Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology (MAST) consortium; a team of scientists and researchers devoted to developing an “autonomous, multifunctional collection of miniature intelligence-gathering robots that can operate in places too inaccessible or dangerous for humans.”

It has to be some small relief to know that after the robot spiders gain self awareness and kill us, real spiders won’t be safe either. Unless the robot and biological spiders converge…Actually, you know what, none of this is good. It’s a good time to pack your truck for a little apocalypse vacation in the mountains, raise your kid and call him John Connor, then start killing ANYTHING with more then two legs. If it has two legs and an exoskeleton, even.

Hampshire College professor Sarah Partan is using a robotic squirrel named “Rocky” to get all social with the local rodents and study them up close. Rocky is controlled wirelessly from a laptop, and his tail and body can move realistically to communicate with other squirrels. He also plays pre-recorded squirrel noises from built-in speakers. The goal of the project is to study how animals communicate.

Apparently, Rocky is fooling them and has totally infiltrated Squirrel society, without letting on that he’s working for the man. Local squirrels seem to respond to him just like any other. That means that either squirrels are dumb as a bag of skittles or that Rocky is a pretty smart bot.

Behold robot fans. We told you about the ultimate Wall-E robot toy. Here’s an animated MP3 player in the form of Wall-E “Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth Class”. He’s available from the Sharper Image, but probably most people haven’t noticed due to the chain’s questionable futute.

The 8-inch-tall “iDance Wall-E” claims to talk and dance to the music and his eyes even light up. You can also plug in an iPod or other MP3 player. I suppose it’s the latest version of the “i-Dog,”, just much cooler, since it’s a robot. He only costs $24.95.

There are a few things that most of geekdom has in common, one is an insatiable lust for all things gadget and the other is an undeniable need to own anything robotic even when the robots gizmos are meant for kids. The latter affliction is easier (and less embarrassing) to indulge in if you have kids, which thankfully I do.

Not too long ago I spent some “testing” time with the UGOBE Pleo robot dinosaur and it was cool but I thought it would be cooler if a robot actually looked like a robot. Disney agreed and has announced a new Pleo-esq robot based on the WALL-E movie hitting the silver screen this summer. The toy is called Ultimate WALL-E and it will go on sale this fall for $189.99.

Everything in Japan has to be made to look cute. Even urinal cleaning robots have to be made to look like elephants. He does his job pretty quickly. His job is to be pushed ass first against the urinal and scrub and clean away.

I’m not sure if it qualifies as a robot, but it does qualify as amazingly freaky and bizarre. This thing can’t even swallow the urinal on it’s own, it has to be pushed. If this guy is cleaning urinals, who’s cleaning him? It’s got to get pretty funky inside that robot, after cleaning urinals all day too. Check out the video below.

First of all, this thing looks like it needs a Hello Kitty face on it. It’s basically a pink and white torpedo for women to lay on top of and get touched inappropriately by it’s robot innards. Since it’s a robot, it won’t have to worry about sexual harassment. It’s got wheels too, so once you get your wife good and relaxed, you can just wheel her wherever the hell you want and go play the Wii.

It’s ridiculously expensive at $13,500, but what the hell, it’s got a huge pink visor and a touchscreen. It also “automatically adapts its speed and pressure to the body part it’s massaging,” and since you are laying out all that dough, they give you a built-in audio system too. If you ask me it looks like a futuristic hospital bed that’s only going to fit women on the very thin end of the scale. I guess the moral of the story is to quit eating three square meals at Mickey D’s for a month and only then will you be privileged enough to get a robot massage.

Nemo Gould, a mechanical sculptor, assembled the Big Man robot from all kinds junk materials ranging from vacuum cleaner parts to chair legs and he even used floor polisher. The Robot is a respectable 8 feet tall and has a little robot inside that controls him.

The Big Man robot moves it’s hands to and fro and it can also move it’s mouth up and down. The “Little Man” in it’s chest moves levers that control Big Man. It doesn’t get much more awesome then watching a tiny robot control a big robot with antlers on it’s head. Video below.