Dittmer, Missouri: Big Bender

A towing business displays a supersized junk art rendition of Futurama's sociopath robot, Bender. His head alone is a 55 gallon oil drum, to give you a sense of his scale.

Odd phone number across the front of bender. Pretty cool if you're a fan of the show. Need a further away picture to get the scope of how big this guy is.

According to Tony Glacken, father of Troy Glacken, Big Bender returned to his prominent place outside of Dittmer Towing on April 13, 2016, "at one o'clock in the morning." Bender had been missing since November 2014, when the Glackens removed him for repairs, which obviously took longer than they'd anticipated. Tony told us that Big Bender will now be in place "forever," and that there's a Little Bender inside the towing garage as well.

Years ago, Tony displayed an upside-down car outdoors to call attention to the family business, a bit of showmanship that eventually inspired his son Troy to create the eye-catching giant-sized sociopathic robot from the cartoon series Futurama.

Very large junk statue of Bender from Futurama at Dittmer Auto Repair.

Not much of a detour off of Route 66 - just 10 or so miles. Added a half hour or less to our road trip.