Struggling to find a Christmas or Black Friday prezzie for the person who owns every novelty mug on Earth? Why not gift a palm-sized robot programmed to endure a relentless existential crisis on your desk?! Ladies and gentlemen – here is the Butter Bot.
Following a successful 2024 Kickstarter and two years of intensive engineering, creative tech studio CircuitMess is finally shipping its officially licensed Rick and Morty Butter Bot. And yes, theoretically, it will be able to pass you the butter. Better yet, it rolls around on rubber caterpillar tracks delivering deadpan commentary about the futility of its own existence. Yes please!
However, even though this grumpy little companion looks like the product of some of the best 3D printers out there, it will set you back $349. Yeah, it's for the ultra-fans only.
What is my purpose?
Inspired by a two-second gag from the intro of an Rick and Morty episode, Butter Bot started life as a cult Kickstarter project backed by 2,715 eager fans ($441,349 pledged). CircuitMess spent two years, and three electronics revisions plus custom steel moulds, turning that animated gag into a real, palm-sized AI desk robot.
And yes, of course this includes AI. Under the hood, it packs an onboard AI camera, dual microphones, edge sensors, and a remote controller featuring a live first-person video feed. Because its voice, face, and object recognition run on-device, it should recognise its owner, identify random desk clutter, read out phone notifications, tell jokes, control your TV, and – crucially – ferry sticks of butter across the table (though how the hell this is done is currently a mystery to me).
Left alone, it roams your workspace, avoids table edges, and loudly questions its own purpose. Pick it up and it panics; shake it and it disapproves; press the controller’s 'Poke' button and you’ll visibly irritate it.
Tinkerers can also snap on six modular add-ons, including an air-quality sensor, motion-sensing intruder alarm, and LED light show. O you can reprogram its open-source brain from scratch using C++ or CircuitBlocks (I'll leave that to the people in the know).
Available worldwide now at circuitmess.com for $349, it’s a wonderfully over-engineered piece of pop-culture hardware that can turn existential dread into festive cheer. If you can afford it!
