Some robots fold laundry. Some robots vacuum. Butter Bot has one job, and the job is passing butter. Rick and Morty fans can quote the scene in their sleep. Rick builds a tiny robot at the breakfast table, and the robot asks what its purpose is. The answer lands like a layoff notice. You pass butter. That’s the whole job.
CircuitMess Butter Bot
Camera face recognition and voice control · Pre-assembled robot with controller and six hot-swap modules · Code it in CircuitBlocks or C++
Price: $349
Where to buy: Buy at CircuitMess
CircuitMess and Geek Club turned the saddest job description on TV into a real, officially licensed robot.
Their Butter Bot raised $441,349 from 2,715 backers on Kickstarter, and every backer bot has now shipped. Everyone else can buy the retail bundle straight from CircuitMess’s store.
A tiny robot with a very full schedule
The robot is a little tank with a camera for a head, rolling across your desk on a pair of treads. That camera handles face recognition, so Butter Bot learns to spot its owner. Microphones pick up your voice commands, and the voice synthesis talks back with complaints, jokes, and full commitment to the character. A dual-core processor runs the show, which is a lot of brain for a butter joke.
It also wanders off on its own. Autonomous mode sends it exploring the desk, and the included controller hands the wheel back to you whenever you want it.
The controller streams a live feed from the camera, so every drive happens from the robot’s point of view. Physical buttons summon it, poke it, or tell it to shut up, because of course those buttons exist.
Three control styles cover every mood. Talk to it and it answers, drive it yourself with the controller, or let it roam and see what it finds. The camera feed makes the roaming funnier than it should be. Owners pick the style, and the robot keeps the attitude either way.
About the actual butter
Here’s the part that sells the whole thing. The skinny arms are decorative. Ask Butter Bot to pass the butter, out loud, in plain English, and it won’t hand you a thing.
It talks back instead, armed with jokes and excuses, like an employee who read the job description very carefully.
The gag works because the robot stays busy between butter emergencies. It rolls a D20 for game night and answers questions like a Magic 8-Ball. It tells jokes on request, too.
It also knows a shelf of excuses by heart, and every single one arrives with total confidence. None of the excuses involve actually moving butter any closer to you. A robot this committed to a bit rarely gets boring.
Your phone gets a coworker
Pair Butter Bot with an iPhone or an Android phone over Bluetooth, and the little desk toy picks up real assistant work. It reads your notifications out loud, plays and skips your music, and warns you when your phone battery starts running low.
For a robot with one fake job, it covers a few real ones. It’s a weird promotion, from butter duty to personal assistant, and the little guy handles it fine.
Charging is simple, since the robot runs on a built-in battery and tops up over USB-C with the cable included. The controller is the old-school part of the package. It runs on three AA batteries, and those don’t come in the box, so raid the junk drawer before delivery day. The robot itself never asks for batteries, which is the correct attitude.
The homework is the fun part
The bundle packs six snap-on expansion modules in with the robot and the controller. A gas sensor sniffs the air, a motion sensor stands guard, and an LED module handles the light show. The infrared blaster is the sneaky favorite, since it learns your TV remote’s signals. Each one changes what the little guy can do, and the set covers most of a small smart room.
One voice command later, the robot can flip on the TV or the AC for you. A temperature and humidity sensor rounds out the weather report, and a blank perf board waits for whatever you invent. The modules are hot-swappable, so Butter Bot gains a new skill every time you snap one in.
The coding layer sits under all of it, and it’s the part that keeps this from becoming shelf decor. Beginners get CircuitBlocks, a drag-and-drop editor for new behaviors, voice lines, and reactions. Anyone comfortable with C++ can rewrite the firmware itself, since the hardware and software are open source.
The retail bundle costs $349, and nobody should pretend that’s couch-cushion money. Backers paid $139 for the basic pack during the campaign, while the retail box carries the robot, the controller, and six modules. The campaign ended in December 2024, so this is the second chance for anyone who missed it.
That money also buys the camera and the screened controller in the box. It’s a serious price for a desk robot, even one this funny.
CircuitMess Butter Bot
Camera face recognition and voice control · Pre-assembled robot with controller and six hot-swap modules · Code it in CircuitBlocks or C++
Price: $349
Where to buy: Buy at CircuitMess
This one’s for the Rick and Morty fan whose shelf already holds a portal gun. Butter Bot earns the spot because the joke keeps running long after the unboxing, and the coding homework gives it a second life. Buy it for the bit, and keep it for the projects.
