Creed, released this week, has been credited with rebooting the Rocky franchise, allowing audiences to forget the disappointing sequels of the Eighties. But perhaps these films are worth revisiting. Rocky IV is seen by many as the series’ nadir, but it did give us one moment worth remembering: Paulie’s robot butler.

In the 1985 film, Rocky Balboa’s brother-in-law Paulie receives a six-foot robot as an unexpected – and unwanted – birthday present from the boxer. “What the hell is this?” he asks, as the robot attempts to serve him birthday cake. “It’s creepy […] This is extremely psycho, Rocko.” Rocky attempts to win him over to the android, telling Paulie, “It’ll keep ya company when you’re alone.”

Later in the film, Paulie grows used to his new companion, and things become even stranger. Paulie reprogrammes the robot, changing its abrasive intonation to the voice a human woman. “That’s my girl,” he tells Rocky, pointing at the droid. “She loves me.”

The story behind the robot’s involvement is even stranger. Designed, controlled and voiced by Robert Doornick, the founder of US company International Robotics, the robot has had a more successful acting career than many of his fellow cast-members. Known as Sico, it is the first non-human member of America’s Screen Actors Guild.

The robot has guest-starred in Days of Our Lives, entertained Ronald Reagan at a White House dinner, toured with James Brown, and shared an intimate moment with Carly Simon in the music video for her song, My New Boyfriend: Sico presents the singer with a bouquet of flowers, before carrying her away in its arms. Today, fans can buy their own, fully-functioning Sico online for around £240,000 (not including postage and packaging).

But the robot’s big break only came with Rocky IV, after Sylvester Stallone saw the machine and its creator on an American talk-show. Doornick explained that one use for the robot would be to help autistic school-pupils with communication. “All children relate easily with the robot,” he told journalist Phil Edwards in a 2014 interview, “and that makes it easier to forge connections, whether the children are on the autism spectrum or not.”

More recently, he has explained his motivation: “My suspicion was that students who did not fare well in school were, on many occasions, simply not motivated and interested.”

“I thought by creating technologies that were interactive, we could help,” he said. Since his own childhood, Doornick had always wanted to “make robots that help people.”

Carly Simon with Sico in My New Boyfriend Credit: Sony

Listening to Doornick speak about autism-therapy in the mid-Eighties, Stallone immediately took an interest: his younger son, Seargeoh (born in 1979), is autistic.

“We got a call from the Stallone family,” Doornick remembered in an interview with triviahappy.com. “They were very interested in how the robot could work with his son. One thing led to another and Stallone completely became enamored with Sico, that particular character.”

The robot was introduced to his son, with great success, and Stallone offered to write a part for Sico in his next Rocky film. His older son, Sage, already had an acting role in the film – as Rocky’s son – so including the robot was to offer a similar favour to Seargeoh.

Only a couple of brief scenes involving the robot made it into the film, and its few appearances can seem puzzling to audiences. But Stallone originally wrote several unfilmed scenes for Sico, fleshing out the developing relationship between Paulie and his helpmeet.

Rocky IV is not generally seen as a high-point in Stallone’s career: the film holds a 40% “rotten” rating from reviews amalgamator Rotten Tomatoes. Few people would class it among their favourites, although Kim Jong-un is a notable exception. North Korean state television footage released in 2012 showed the dictator applauding a scene in which Rocky repeatedly punches a much larger Russian boxer.

A version of Sico has appeared in Family Guy Credit: Fox

It's time to re-evaluate this overlooked piece of the Rocky canon. By launching Sico’s acting career, Stallone helped to support to one of the earliest experiments in robot-assisted therapy (now considered a valuable educational tool).

Sico is now seen as a half-remembered Eighties joke (one regularly spoofed by shows such as Family Guy), which many people can't quite believe actually happened. But it could be argued that by presenting robots as an everyday part of family life, rather than a bizarre sci-fci menace, Stallone paved the way for a more broad-minded approach to robotics. Were it not for Paulie’s robot butler, Gordon Gecko might never have had his own in Wall Street (1987).

One day (to borrow a company slogan from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) we could all have “a plastic pal who’s fun to be with” – and not just wealthy Wall Street bankers, but former factory workers like Paulie. A robot in every home: the ultimate American Dream.