Text from Mom:

"Hey Kamala, for Christmas this year your father and I are letting you either get a pet bird, or a toy robot."

Ms. Marvel: "Mom, I'm not a little kid anymore. Why would I need a toy ro-"

"- oh wait, nvmd, I see." "Don't know if I'll be lucky enough to get that for the holiday tho"

Main idea:

I just got Show of Empathy from Christmas and was running down the list of nemesis minions that were non-elite. I mean, Christmas is over and the New Year is around the corner, but gee if you find a deal on a nice robot coincidentally , get if you can afford it!

With shadow of the past though you'll pull only Thomas Edison and shuffle his robot into the encounter deck, meaning that you'll hopefully have Show of Empathy already in play to grab Thomas Edison as your new pet (that can thwart/defend attacks without taking damage if you have a minion in play besides him), or you can hunt down a nice deal on the robot.

This deck concept has been around for ages: use Shrink and Embiggen! to completely buff your cheaper attacking and thwarting events, (namely Clear the Area, Multitasking and Turn the Tide). The thing though with the robot and show of empathy is that you need to pay a resource, and then transfer enough damage/threat to the bot to take control of him.

The good thing though is that you can beat it up as much as you want before putting threat on it from Show of Empathy. Worst case scenario: you drop it to 2 hit points, move 2 threat onto it, and then use it immediately taking 1 consequential damage. Even if it's on 1 hit point, it's going to stay around FOREVER. No insurance, no repairs, just absolutely busted.

So have fun playing with either your evil talking pet parrot that won't shut-up about how it's... (not a bird?), or showing off your indestructible tank to your friends when you go back to school after the break. And Happy New Year y'all