It seems that people wanted to combine toys and robots for quite a long time, as attested by this intriguing dog-shaped vacuum cleaner patented in 1972:

"A toy dog closely resembling a real dog and having a hollow interior in which is mounted a vacuum cleaner having a suction hose which is retractable from the tail end of the dog. This enables vacuuming a dog after a hair cut and grooming without causing fear to the dog, inasmuch as the vacuum cleaner noise is greatly muffed by such enclosure. The vacuum cleaner is convertible to a blower and air issuing from the tail end can be heated so as to serve as a dryer."

why do I blog this? curiosity towards robots and their combination with familiar representations. The dog is interesting as it is a pet (easily acceptable by owners) but it's curious to think about a furry device to clean things up. It's also pertinent to see the time taken by this sort of artifacts to be adopted... in the end with roombas which are a bit more minimalist.