Why else do you have five robots if not to form some larger robot from them?

Further, some might say that a robotic combine harvester could just as easily drive itself, and that therefore the role of The Beaver is superfluous. To these charlatans I say, go ahead, next time you see an unattended harvester, just see how it handles without a beaver at the helm, and then may you know the embarrassment of an opinion too quickly formed!

- Count Dolby von Luckner

If memory serves me correctly, in Japan groups contain five things. If you had a half dozen eggs to sell, you would bill them as five plus one. I'm not sure why six isn't as good as five, but I do know that groups of four are less desirable because the word for four, shi, sounds like death.

So, Japan being the world leader in giant robots, this is why all groups of robots that combine to form a larger robot consist of five robots.

This is pretty much the rule these days.

I'm sure some people realized the robots were going to combine to form a larger thing as soon as we introduced them. I'm less sure that people had their money on "Combine Harvester."

--Geoff