Man-O-War
Guardian
Iowa Class Battleship
RELEASES
MR-54
Gobot #66
RM-57

This figure was originally released in 1986, as the final figure in the Machine Robo Series in Japan, named Battleship Robo. The toy was reissued shortly afterwards for the Revenge of Cronos tie-in line, recoded MRB-17.

Tonka gave him the Man-O-War name, and issued him towards the end of the Gobots range later the same year. Man-O-War even got into the cartoon series as a belligerent Guardian in the episode "Mission Gobotron". And proved himself to be more more interesting than Leader-1 to boot.

The figure was issued with a slightly different colour scheme in Europe - the superstructure is darker, and the robot feet are red. An all-plastic knockoff has also been produced - this does have a lot more paint apps (notably a red and orange face), but the red is lighter and the upper hull is silver.

Man-O-War (not really bad, for a Gobots name…) has a rather novel disguise mode, especially for a toy this size - an Iowa-class World War II battleship.

Considering he's about 4" long, there's a nice amount of detail, though the moulded gun turrets are a bit of a letdown. The colour scheme, however, is rather sharp, though in this mode, the US version looks better - the random red stern doesn't look particularly good. The only other real problem is the bow section can work loose.

It's a neat little model, all things considered, and looks quite nice escorting the Transformers toy Broadside - the scale's a bit off, but the colour schemes are surprisingly close.

The transformation sequence is neat and simple, and leaves rather a good little robot. I mean, he's not going to have you chucking out your Robot Masters in disgust, but he's a very fun little robot.

There's a bit of articulation in the shoulders, and the head mould isn't bad, plus you can see he turns into a battleship without the alt mode features. The colour scheme works well - especially if you have the red-footed European variant. It's a shame the main bridge folds so poorly, though. Considering the alt mode, this is a very neat, efficient robot mode.

Much like Tail Pipe, Man-O-War's stocky, conventional layout is an oasis among the freaks and misfits of the third series.

Overall, the figure compares well to most of the regular Gobots, and looks good in both modes. A W.W.II battleship is just an incredibly cool, different idea for a figure, and Man-O-War pulls it off beautifully. There's none of the qualifiers associated with most later figures. A couple more paint apps might have pushed him into the top bracket, but even without he's a very nice piece of work. Man-O-War seems to be more common outside of America, where he can be found for around £4 as opposed to $20. For the different variants, both have their plusses - my recommendation would be to buy a cheap one, and then just paint the feet, so the top 75% of them is grey, and the remainder red, which looks good in both modes - there's even a little line to help you do this =)