I still think the epitome of 80's "engineering" belonged to Tomy. Their engineers and product designers were mechanical engineering wizards.
I personally think they showed absolute mastery of the subject with the release of the Tomy Armatron.
It may not seem possible, but that 5 axis robot arm was completely mechanical. The entire drive system was powered by a single 3 volt DC motor that ran on two D-cells.
It had two joysticks for control; each had, IIRC, 4-way directional control, along with stick rotation mechanically coupled to a complex transmission system that controlled each axis (I believe the rotation of the stick controlled on one side the jaws of the gripper, while the other controlled rotation of the wrist).
It really is the most complex manual transmission control scheme you can imagine.
It was built upon years of similarly complex systems for various tabletop "games" (Atomic Pinball, for instance), as well as weird mechanical and electronic systems for their various entertainment robots they created (culminating in the Omnibot robot line).
Check it all out if you ever have the chance. Most of these robots have become collectors items (and should be treated as such for the most part), but the Armatron was mass produced and licensed all over the place, with Radio Shack being the main outlet in the day; you can find used RS-licensed Armatrons all over Ebay cheaply. In fact, there's so many RS Armatrons available, you hardly ever see an actual Tomy branded one (if you ever find one, especially NIB, and it's cheap - grab it and hold onto it).
There are more than a few articles on the internet detailing how to modify the Armatron to connect it to a computer (back in the day, the common machine to do this with was an Apple or Commodore). Many of these articles have tear-down images showing the inner workings of the Armatron.