Plicnocchio
Built by Santiago Plicio in November 2025
‘Plicnocchio’ — The story of a boy who wanted to be a model.
We have all grown up with the story of the wooden puppet Pinocchio who wanted to be a real boy, but perhaps you haven’t heard this version!
In the original story, Geppetto was the wood carpenter model maker who wanted to have a boy of his own and so eventually carved one. Perhaps then I am the Meccano model maker who wanted to have a boy robot and eventually went on to make one.
The journey here first involved me making a Meccano mask that I could wear as a fun little surprise, but very soon that evolved to making a chest plate with it, and as such my first attempt at building a body-worn suit out of Meccano, which really brought out the boy in me and made me look almost like I was a robot in the model I affectionately named Metal Mickey.
After the amazing response I got from everyone that saw it and connected with it so engagingly, I was turbocharged in my efforts to evolve it further, and it was no longer enough just for it to be a metal cloak and mask. I had to complete the whole suit of Meccano armour if I wanted to become the whole walking and talking robot, and in that way the suit was added to bit by bit and the mask evolved with it to sit almost like a helmet in the upgraded version that I called The Man in the Iron Mask. It made me feel as excited and gleeful as a little boy.
How is it that some things can make us really connect with that childhood pleasure and how magic it feels when we make those kinds of connections?
That fuller robot-like suit went on to be equally well received by everyone that saw it, and every time the fantastic response made me feel just the same, and it was difficult to know how I would ever feel about one day having to dismantle it, such was the success of its creation.
Then I was asked one day, as the next step, why don’t I build a whole stand-alone robot, and that got me thinking. Perhaps there was no immediate need to dismantle too soon, but instead of having to wear the heavy cloak that brought out the real boy in me, why not help the boy Plicio become the robot he had never realised but perhaps always dreamed of being?
It was in this way that Plicnocchio was wrought and not born. At first just some boyish fun behind a metal mask, who grew into the man in a full body suit but who still felt as gleeful as a boy, but who eventually achieved his destination and wish that the model maker who started constructing models from the gift of his mother when he was still only a young boy finally grew up and realised the model robot he was making.
Geppetto created a wooden puppet model, Pinocchio, who longed to be a real boy. I think I have created yet another model that reminds me of what magic that feels like, and of course you’ll know if I’m telling a lie.
As such, I have named him after the two of us!