After launching with a quartet of futuristic vehicles, the Machine Robo Series largely switched to realistic designs for its' remaining years, with more fantastical designs generally used as Devil Invaders. The line mixed common-or-garden vehicles with more exotic types such as sportscars and jet fighters. Also chosen was the iconic NASA Orbiter, emerging as the Shuttle Robo in 1983. Later that year, the figure was included in a 'Best of Machine Robo' 5-pack, unchanged except for some modified stickers.

Given its' American overtones, it was little surprise than the figure was offered in the debut series of Gobots from Tonka, under the name Spay-C. Meanwhile in Japan, the Orbiter was used as a vehicle mode for one of the larger Big Machine Robo range. Despite this using a completely different robot mode configuration, it came to America in late 1984 as the Super Gobot version of Spay-C - soon afterwards, the smaller version was discontinued. However, it continued to be used as the animation model in the Challenge of the Gobots (where Spay-C was a female character).

Early adverts for the Eagle's Robo Machines strip also mentioned Spay-C as a featured character, but instead he/she only showed up once, and that was because of an art error. In Japan, the original toy was reissued in 1986, joining the Jet Tribe (hence a new code for the toy, MRJ-4) and getting a few appearances in the Revenge of Cronos Anime series.

Considering the very small scale (1/300-ish), Bandai did make a valiant attempt at detailing this thing. The most obvious touchstones of the Shuttle are all present, including black in most of the right places, the famous booster arrangement, and some whacking great big stickers.

The undercarriage actually works well despite the lack of realism - it'd be impossible to make wheels for this at such a small size, so at least the designer decided to make it display nicely.

Sadly, Spay-C suffers from a lack of cohesion, with a surprising amount of vehicle mode quality sacrificed (it's usually the other way round with these figures). The whole cabin section has a habit of rotating on its' own, while the tailfin tends to slip down as well (it's also only tentatively attached to the main body, and very thin). The lines around the arms and between the legs are huge. On top of this, there's an obvious bunch of circuits for the robot chest on top of the fuselage, which is a big shame.

The transformation is straightforward, though make sure you turn the cabin through 90° before pulling out either arm. The rotating nose is a nice touch, however, and while it is delicate, it's nice the fin flips up completely out of the way instead of cluttering up the legs.

While the cabin/helmet is a nice touch, the face (which is a respectable, if obvious design - not particularly female, though, I'm not sure exactly what criteria Hanna-Barbera actually used when assigning genders to the characters… some sort of lucky dip, I guess…) sits too far back in it. Aside from this, the figure is pretty well proportioned, and has a few nice touches - I like the engine cowling as feet, for example.

Ironically, the silver chest details that impede the shuttle mode don't look that good at all - just a plain white chest might have been better for both modes.