7 replies to this topic

[TheHSBR]

Why is it that almost every toy line has issues in scale. This new DST Wave 3 scale is ridiculous. The WWE figures basically have no scale. The only line that has some semblence of a scale is the Marvel Legends line and even that is off frequently. Is it that hard to make figures their correct sizes? And dont give me that plastic is expensive line because for every tall figure you waste money on you recoup that with the smaller ones. To me, scale shouldnt be this hard.......just my thought for the day.

[knightone]

I think there are a lot of issues at work:

Difficulty in sculpting in scale due to the small nature of the figures.

Different sculptors or teams of sculptors. In larger companies, different departments doing different things yet similar things at the same time without good communication.

Different plastics have different amounts of shrinkage and using different factories and different plastics can cause scale issues.

In some lines, scale might not even be considered, at least not scrutinized.

I'm sure there are other reasons as well, but those are just some general ones off the top of my head.

[Gothneo]

Sometimes its a problem translating the sculpt to the mold... especially when that portion is outsourced.

Back in the old days every character in a particular line was made the same size. I think it's a cedit that most companies even try to get the scale right.

[Stormfury_Echo]

Yeah, I can see how scale can be a problem, but it seems to me the new TWOK figures are in awesome scale.

[pickard]

You should see the DC Direct Hawkman figure I picked up yesterday from their line based on the art of Ed McGuinness. He's a head taller than every other human figure from the same line.

Of course, DC Direct is the absolute worst when it comes to scale, even compared to DST.

[BStu]

WWE Figures don't "basically" have no scale. They have no scale. They don't pretend to. The streamline production by reusing parts. Some figures can be taller or shorter than others, but there is no effort to make anything to scale and I don't think the company has every suggested that they would make such an effort. It runs counter to their production process.

Now, specialty toy makes do make an effort to enact some scale. I actually think the TNG figures have made too much of an effort to introduce scale. I wouldn't mind a bit if they had more part re-use which would have reduced scale but probably also reduced production costs. The attempt at scale we've gotten to date is almost overwhelming, and it dates back to the original AA figures who were all subtly different heights.

I'm actually softening my scale concerns with at least the Season 7 figures. Its off, but not radically so. Levar Burton is actually relatively short. Really, the biggest problem to date was Picard who was simply too tall. Stewart is about the same height as Spiner and Frakes and Dorn both have a good half-foot on him. That said, Dwight Schultz was a lot taller than either of them. I could have understood if they just put his head on Data's body, but they didn't. He does have his own scale, so you have to look at it as being off.

Now, the problem here is that we're judging the actor's heights. The thing is, directors will try to minimize the appearance of height differences on TV and in the movies. They also may exaggerate height differences in other instances. So the height of the characters is very hard to hit upon. I think the scale could have been better, but I'm increasingly less sure that its really all that bad.

You know who had a really good sense of scale? The Muppets line from Palisades. They cheated every now and again, but you could hardly tell because they were so good about keeping everything in good scale. They only cheated on the really large figures or playsets or the really small figures.

[JMW326]

I made an interesting discovery last night while I was setting up my TNG season 7 figures for display. I got everyone up on the shelf and added my custom Picard last and it looked great but then I decided to see what it would look like with the real S7 Picard and well as we all know he is to tall and looks awkward. I then decided to see what the Captains Jacket Picard looked like and to my surprise that figure is actualy shorter than the S7 Picard and looks pretty good displayed with the rest of the crew.

I stood both my S7 Picard and my captains jacket Picard next to each other on a level flat surface and the S7 picard is definately taller. The captains jacket Picard is just slightly (hardly noticable) taller than COC Data.

If this discovery has already been made I apologize for the post.

[ECH]

Well I didn't know that, so I think you may be in the clear.

Although I only collect the Nemesis figures I can't say that I'm too concerned with scale. As long as its round about right then I not bothered. As BStu said, its difficult to judge heights exactly.