Moebius Models 1/8 Iron Man War Machine Kit First Look

by Michael Benolkin

First Look

Moebius Models is back with another installment in their coverage of the Iron Man series. This is the War Machine version that was featured in Iron Man 2 in which the technology is 'taken' from Stark Industries and provided to a competing company (the lowest bidder). The result was this suit worn by Lt.Col. 'Rhodey' Rhodes in the main battle alongside Iron Man and demonstrated its underwhelming performance.

The kit is molded in blue-gray styrene and presented on 11 parts trees plus one tree and one display base molded in white styrene. You can see in the images that there is a load of detail in this kit. I was going to do a separate quick-build review of this kit but one thing led to another and the model is done. Check it out.

As with all of our quick-builds, assembly is accomplished using liquid cement (no cyano) and simple spue cutters, files, and clamps (when needed) to get the model together. No fillers or paint was used so you can see for yourself how this model goes together.

The engineering in this kit is outstanding, it is very difficult to get the wrong parts together, but assembly is slow at first as you try to understand the parts used against those shown in the instructions. While the parts on the trees are numbered, the four pairs of parts in the bottom image are not numbered so you have to figure out by the process of elimination which parts are needed for each step. Don't get me wrong, this kit does go together nicely, but you'll feel like you're taking an engineering aptitude test initially as you try to identify and then orient each part. Fortunately assembly goes faster the further you get through the build as you don't have as many parts to find.

As I said, the engineering in this kit is great as the main joints in the arms, legs, and head all go into very secure sockets in the torso. There's just enough play in each limb that you can fine-tune the pose. While the legs were still drying in the torso, I dry-fit the figure onto the mounting pins on the display base so I can ensure that the model dries in the correct pose. Once I was happy with the results, I glued feet to the display base.

The only real frustrating part of the model was the ammo feed chute to the gatling gun. These are made up from a number of small sections and it would have been far easier to make fewer and longer parts out of styrene or simply mold one part out of a flexible vinyl like the rubber tracks in many armor models.

This kit was an enjoyable build and now I'm even more interested in doing the other Iron Man figures with paint and (where applicable) lighting! If you're wanting something different and fun on your bench, give this kit a try!

My sincere thanks to Moebius Models for this review sample!