I do not care for HERBIE. And furthermore, I don’t think it makes any sense for him to be in Fantastic Four: First Steps.

Let me explain.

We have told you about HERBIE before here at Polygon, but let’s recap anyway. The little robot guy, who appears in the trailer for The Fantastic Four: First Steps making cute noises and cooking soup or whatever, first appeared in an animated TV show called The New Fantastic Four. The most important thing to know about HERBIE’s origin is that he was on the show instead of the Human Torch, because of rights issues (there was going to be a Human Torch movie, but that didn’t pan out).

This situation arguably set up HERBIE to be hated by people like me. He’s there because we don’t get to have a cooler character there. Not good! Yet you can’t very well put........

© Polygon