Well not really disposable maybe but I've been dreaming and looking for a <$50 projector for a while now, something I can use when the projecotor is at great risk of damage or theft.   (and small battery powerd would be cool too)
Quality of course is assumed to be at an absolute minimum.

I've been watching the zoom box since it's got the dvd player built in, but it's still priced too high. 

My best option I thought was to hack together a Opque projector and a portable flash drive, portable DVD player with a screen, or a old PDA or digital camera that can play video.  But the price has been a little over my $50 target and the work to get it to work right and dependably is enogh to make me wait untill I really need it.

But today I spoted the Senario AL-100 Mega Vu Torpedo 6ft Video Projector at buy.com for $70 which is still over my target, but the closest I've seen.  Crappy quality, and you will still need a video out device which would bring the cost up to $95.  But it's pretty cheap, and could be run off battery fairly easily.

I'd pull out an old digital camera to feed it images, (I have two semi-broken cannons that can play video, though I can't figure out how to encode a video that they will accept, so I'd have to shoot it off screen) or pick up one of these Coby DVD-209 Ultra Compact DVD Player.

But if $95 is still too much my old plan was to try something like a couple of these hooked together.
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glovePIE

Glove Programmable Input Emulator 

Super cool application.   I've been meaning to download and try out glovePIE for a long time.   I did pick up a $15 Essential Reality P5 Glove from Wall Mart when they dumped them a few years ago. However it's the Wii Remote support that has been driving the interest in glovePIE lately, and it drove my interest as well.

My use of the Wii remote on my PC is still pretty flaky, probably due to Bluetooth being generally flaky transport :(

But I'm very impressed with the feature set of GlovePIE, in fact it almost matches a tool concept that I worked on many years ago at the end of my real interest in VR.  That concept being scriptable IO routing hub.

I've used PD, and PERL scripts to achieve this, and certainly PD fits the bill pretty well, but GlovePIE with support for MIDI, OSC, and numerous game controlers seems to do most of what I'm looking for and more. And has a different mindset than PD; it's really foucused on routing input.
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http://www.zachpoff.com/site/software/software.html

I just saw this posted on the Make blog, Zach Poff has generously taken the time to package up his work and give it away to the world, source code and all. Praise be Open Source!
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I got wind of this toy on the Make Blog

It's a music box kit, bring your own score :)

Certainly something to add to the atomiton toolbox.

selling on Think Geek for only $12.99
http://www.thinkgeek.com/

Not sure how to work this into a robot exactly, but maybe it's time to build a wind up robot for my son with a specialy commisioned tune loaded in it's music box.