Robonova-I $1000 HiTEC Robot
The Robonova is amazingly cool, and a great robot platform to experiment with and hack. Although it's more expensive than the Robosapien, it's capable of a lot more - including entry in major robot competitions like Robo-One. There's a detailed build story by Matt Bauer covering what it takes to put one together out of the box - http://www.robots-dreams.com/2006/02/robot_builder_p_1.html that also includes a short video clip of karate/kung fu moves Matt was able to program for the Robonova.