Tinribs

Tinribs is a character in the British adult comic Viz.

He is a badly constructed "robot" which belongs to schoolboy Tommy Taylor. The comic strip is loosely based on the Brassneck strip from the The Dandy comic from 1964 to 1968. Whereas Brassneck was a fully functional humanoid robot capable of many tasks including fighting crime, Tinribs is a small wooden tray mounted on a skateboard, two baked bean cans supporting a rod for his arms with small gloves on each end and a Barbie doll electronic voice box. His face is drawn on to a slightly inflated balloon tied to the rod for his arms. Tinribs is pulled along by his owner by a piece of string. He repeats the continuous phrase of "My name is Barbie, I love you very much".

The majority of the strips take place within the school environment where Tinribs always saves the day. Tinribs's abilities are based on what his component parts are capable of i.e. Tinribs 'performed surgery' when his owner used one of Tinribs's baked bean cans serrated lid as a crude cutting tool. Despite the pathetic and dysfunctional results of Tinribs' "actions", they always draw delighted praise from the other pupils.

The process of "saving the day" frequently involves Tinribs's owner using Tinribs's parts to perform painful mutilations on Tinribs's owner's teacher, Mr Snodgrass. Far from defending his subordinate, the school's headmaster supports Tinribs's owner's ingenuity and positively encourages Snodgrass to submit to mutilation. Snodgrass accordingly hates Tinribs and many of the strips centre around his schemes for its destruction, which invariably backfire. The headmaster is also fond of humiliating Snodgrass even if Tinribs is not directly involved; for example, one strip concludes with the headmaster ordering Snodgrass to stand on the roof of the school and masturbate over the school playground so that his ejaculations will simulate snowfall.