John Riggs Custom Made BO SONIC ROBOT (Whistling) Toy Only A Few Made SEE VIDEO!

John pressed a button on a custom remote -- one of many in the Hut -- and Robby the Robot sprang to whirring, clattering life. "Welcome to Altair 4, gentlemen," Robby said. "For your convenience I am monitored to respond to the name Robby." John told us that it took him ten years (and a lot of trial and error) to build this particular Robby. His first version, "just a collection of crap, basically," cost him $300 to build. He recently sold it for 20 times that much.

We walked down an aisle lined with toy robots to the back of the Hut, and John tapped some commands into a computer. His Machine Man Band leapt into action: two big robots, packed with musical instruments, that can play 160 different songs. John, of course, designed and built the Band himself. "It's kinda loud; you can't really turn any of this stuff down," he shouted over calliope toots and cymbal crashes.

In the next aisle stood "Robo-Rigg," a life-size cast of John Rigg's face with moving eyes, mounted on a robot body. "It's just a tank cover from a motorcycle and some dryer vents and mixing bowls and light bulbs and toilet plungers and screen door closers on the back of the legs and Dustbusters for feet," said John, casually. Robots that resemble people really don't interest John, but for an undisclosed fee he built two similar robots for a rich man and his son. "The guy actually had better moving eyes," John recalled. "The kid, his mouth could open, so I even had to do the teeth."

Next to Robo-Rigg is one of John's most celebrated creations -- a full-size working Robby-piloted car, another prop from Forbidden Planet. Although Robby sits in the driver's seat, the car is actually driven by the passenger with foot pedals. In years past, John would zip around the roads in his neighborhood in the car -- until he crashed it into his mailbox. Now it's a permanent exhibit in the Robot Hut. We asked John if his neighbors had a nickname for him. "If they do, it's probably not a good one," he said.

Spending too much time inside The Robot Hut can make your optical circuitry overheat -- there's so much dazzling mech to scan. Still, John insists that he strictly limits himself in what he collects and builds, or else he'd need a building three times as big as the one that he has now. He's frank about his likes and dislikes (R2D2 is good, the Transformers are bad) and offers no apologies for his tastes. It is, after all, his collection, and there's probably none better in the world that the public can see -- if they're lucky.