China’s latest obsession: Watching robots fight

Remember BattleBots? First seen on Comedy Central in 2000 and revived this spring by Discovery Channel, the reality show featured elaborately-armed homemade robots fighting each other to the death.

Watched eagerly by children and adults across the US, the show became such a hit that the robots were made into Happy Meal toys, starred in a Super Bowl commercial for Budweiser, and appeared in the TV show Malcolm in the Middle.

Nearly two decades later, combat robots are now making a splash in China. A 12-episode online series called Clash Bots debuted on Baidu’s video streaming site iQiyi on March 29.

Within the first day, it was watched by more than 78 million people. In comparison, the most recent season finale of Game of Thrones had 12.1 million viewers.

But as the review site AwksNerd pointed out, Clash Bots is more of a celebrity-driven show rather than a robot combat tournament. Redditors noted a sizeable chunk of the show was celebrities talking (with product placement by KFC), interspersed with a few actual fights.