1/12 and 1/10 Scale industry confusion

[Poe Ghostal]

(Just for clarity, 1/12 scale = 6" scale, 1/10 scale = 7" scale, 1/18 scale = 3.75" scale)

It's becoming increasingly clear that toy companies have little interest in actually adhering to 1/12 or 1/10 scales, even when they specifically claim to be using that scale.

The new Inart Arkham Origins Batman clearly appears to be 1/10 scale - he's huge. And while I just got the McFarlane Hellboy - ostensibly 1/10, a.k.a. 7", scale - if you assume Hellboy is 6'11" like in the comics, it's barely a 1/12 figure. Meanwhile, according to the specifications on Boss Fight's website, their "1/12" Hellboy is 7.5"(!!) tall, which is too big to be 1/12 scale but technically too small to be 1/10 scale.

NECA's stuff has ostensibly always been 1/10 scale, but some stuff - like their Evil Dead figures - are closer to 1/12.

McFarlane Toys is hopeless. While ostensibly 1/10, a lot of their stuff is in some weird no man's land between being too tall for 1/12 and too small for 1/10.

Marvel Legends was originally a pretty decent 1/12 scale, but over time it creeped up to something like 6.5" scale, meaning a 6' tall person is taller than 6". It's not 1/10 scale but it's not 1/12. Mythic Legions also feels like a "oversized 1/12" that doesn't quite get to 1/10.

Star Wars Black Series (and its cousin, Indiana Jones Adventure Series) are some of the closest to true 1/12 scale, so of course when I look at them now I tend to find them a little small.

For a while, it seemed like overseas manufacturers like Bandai with Figuarts were fairly committed to consistent 1/12 scaling, but as I said before, other overseas companies are really starting to play fast and loose with that.

I'm not going anywhere specific with this other than to say this all drives my collecting OCD a bit nuts. And also, I historically blame McFarlane for this, because most (collector-oriented) toy lines in the late 1990s / early 2000s were converging on moving from the 5.5" scale that had dominated since the end of the 3.75" era to the 6" scale, but then McFarlane and his Movie Maniacs had to be bigger than everyone else and focused on the 7" scale that NECA then used because they were essentially trying to continue what McFarlane had been doing.

I suppose it's a bit too much to ask that toy companies properly label their toys 1/12 or 1/10. I get the impression that "1/10 scale" is considered a somewhat unusual scale, marketing-wise, so there's this innate push to use "1/12 scale" as the alternate to "1/6 scale" - i.e., what I'm saying is, for some markets (particularly overseas), collectors understand action figures as being one of three scales: 1/6, 1/12, or 1/18. And so toy companies just saying "1/12" regardless of whether they mean true 1/12 like Figuarts (historically at least), fudged 1/12 like Marvel Legends or Mythic Legions, or NECA 1/10 scale.

And then there's Beast Kingdom which, like, what the fuck guys, what even is this, who is this for

To be clear, I'm not calling for companies to make figures in one scale or the other. I just don't like someone calling a figure 1/12 and then giving me a 1/10 figure that won't fit with the 1/12 figures I was planning to use for dioramas.

Anyway, just some random pre-coffee logorrhea on a Tuesday morning.

 

[JakeEkiss]

Meanwhile, according to the specifications on Boss Fight's website, their "1/12" Hellboy is 7.5"(!!) tall, which is too big to be 1/12 scale but technically too small to be 1/10 scale.

I'll give the folks doing various Hellboys some grace in that, regardless of any height he has on a filecard, the art style is so abstracted that his real height is pretty malleable.

i.e., what I'm saying is, for some markets (particularly overseas), collectors understand action figures as being one of three scales: 1/6, 1/12, or 1/18. And so toy companies just saying "1/12" regardless of whether they mean true 1/12 like Figuarts (historically at least), fudged 1/12 like Marvel Legends or Mythic Legions, or NECA 1/10 scale.

I think part of what keeps overseas scales somewhat constrained is they have a lot more third party support for dioramas and accessories made to work with the major brands. There are so many Asian miniature brands that are clearly built to work with Figma and such.

 

[fac]

Yeah, relative scale in many lines seems to have fallen apart even within their own lines. ML definitely has started to produce very tall figures that in true 1:12 scale would be 8 feet tall. I haven't been happy with some of that.

1:10 scale would make the most sense in a metric world.

What I find odd about the scale creep upwards is it costs the manufacturer money to increase the size - extra plastic, extra paint, extra weight/volume for shipping. I would have predicted scale creep downwards to save money, given they always claim this about larger figures needing premium pricing.

 

[Poe Ghostal]

I'll give the folks doing various Hellboys some grace in that, regardless of any height he has on a filecard, the art style is so abstracted that his real height is pretty malleable.

I think part of what keeps overseas scales somewhat constrained is they have a lot more third party support for dioramas and accessories made to work with the major brands. There are so many Asian miniature brands that are clearly built to work with Figma and such.

Oh I agree on Hellboy - I just find it a bit silly that the "1/12" Boss Fight Hellboy is evidently going to tower over the ostensibly 1/10 McFarlane Hellboy. The McFarlane figure is a brand-new mold, and it was supposed to be part of this Elite Edition sub-line, and everyone knows Hellboy, while maybe not a giant, is not six feet tall, and yet he's the same height as Elite Edition Spawn.

And again, I'm fine with whatever scales overseas manufacturers want to use - just don't call it 1/12 when it isn't, please.

What I find odd about the scale creep upwards is it costs the manufacturer money to increase the size - extra plastic, extra paint, extra weight/volume for shipping. I would have predicted scale creep downwards to save money, given they always claim this about larger figures needing premium pricing.

A friend recently reminded me how when developing Mythic Legions, the Four Horsemen said it was basically the same cost to make a 1/12 line as it was to make a 1/18 line. That suggests that whatever extra plastic it takes to make the figures bigger is one of the less cost-prohibitive aspects of the production process.

 

[fac]

A friend recently reminded me how when developing Mythic Legions, the Four Horsemen said it was basically the same cost to make a 1/12 line as it was to make a 1/18 line. That suggests that whatever extra plastic it takes to make the figures bigger is one of the less cost-prohibitive aspects of the production process.

Sure, I think that is because the main cost is development, molds, factory time, shipping, etc. But once they've picked a scale, if you go bigger, adding an ounce of plastic per figure is a literal ton of plastic for a line producing 30,000 of the figure. Not a big deal in terms of expense per unit but it is more money spent on that than other parts of the budget. So its a choice to expand the size, I am just curious what they think it gets them to make, for example, Gorgon in ML as big as they did.

But back to your main question, another example is Nacelle with their Star Trek line - there is still some confusion as to whether they are 1:10 or 1:12 - they seem to have settled on 1:10 as the official statement.

It would be nice if there was a packaging standard that said the scale but I suspect the manufacturers don't want to get locked into more battles with us nerds about if the figure should be 6" or 6 1/4" tall and the scale on the packaging being misleading...

 

[Poe Ghostal]

To some degree, I can reluctantly accept that due to the vagaries of production, two supposed "1/12" scale toy lines from different companies won't scale with one another internally - although I do think it should be standard to provide the exact height of figures in marketing materials. The Inart Origins Batman is just so clearly a 1/10 figure despite the 1/12 designation.

That said, I do expect that a toy line be internally consistent, scale-wise, from figure to figure. Too many toy lines don't even give us that.

 

[TFitz]

Yeah, that irritates me too. This Kickstarter for Pirates advertises as 1:12 but they clearly state they are 7" tall. That's 1:10 buddies.

Hell, Legends should now say they are 1:11 scale, right in-between 6" and 7" figures.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/406936874/tiderealm-corsairs-fantasy-pirate-action-figures?ref=section-homepage-view-more-discovery-p1&category_id=Q2F0ZWdvcnktMzk2

 

[JakeEkiss]

although I do think it should be standard to provide the exact height of figures in marketing materials

Imports at least are a bit better about that and usually give you height in mm.

This Kickstarter for Pirates advertises as 1:12 but they clearly state they are 7" tall. That's 1:10 buddies.

They're doing some real tap dancing there, as the kickstarter says "7 inch scale" first, and then later says "1/12 scale (approximately 7 inches tall)" which is just nonsense. Feels like they scaled it all for 7" and then later realized that is not as widely collected a scale so tried to obscure it in the text to have their cake and eat it too.

And like, you could convince me your undead skeleton and Cthulhu pirate are 7' tall, but not your normal dude pirate.

 

[Stoopid_Sandwich]

Most of these scale issues are not the manufacturers fault. It comes down to the tooling process and the materials they use. Certain plastics when cooled after exiting the molds will cause shrinkage, but other plastics do not. The firmer the plastic, the less likely it is it will shrink because the plastic could crack. Likewise the gummier the plastic, the more likely it is that the plastic might shrink because it’s more porous and air bubbles can form and then escape. When some toy companies switched over to 3D printing and using resins, most of those figures maintained a larger size ratio overall since resin is a fairly dense and hardened materal, as is ABS plastic. Toy companies have an abundance of materials at their disposal but once they are molded, their properties and how it reacts to extreme temperature changes will dictate how big the figures will be. It’s rarely up to the manufacturers to prognosticate the size of their products to the tiniest margin for error. The best they can provide are estimated size ranges

 

[TFitz]

Imports at least are a bit better about that and usually give you height in mm.


They're doing some real tap dancing there, as the kickstarter says "7 inch scale" first, and then later says "1/12 scale (approximately 7 inches tall)" which is just nonsense. Feels like they scaled it all for 7" and then later realized that is not as widely collected a scale so tried to obscure it in the text to have their cake and eat it too.

And like, you could convince me your undead skeleton and Cthulhu pirate are 7' tall, but not your normal dude pirate.

Exactly. I think there was a pic of them being slightly larger than Mythic Legion, so they're def. 1:10 scale.

 

[TFitz]

Most of these scale issues are not the manufacturers fault. It comes down to the tooling process and the materials they use.

While this can be the case in some instances, it's not on the Pirate Kickstarter. They specifically state multiple times that they are 1:12 scale and 7". Both can't be true.

 

[JakeEkiss]

The best they can provide are estimated size ranges

I definitely understand some variance and not being able to accurately hit a Marvel Handbook exact height for every character. Just because of reuse that's not feasible.

That said, Classified, ML, and Black Series are all from Hasbro and are not in scale with each other, but are generally scaled to themselves. That is to say, there's a *noticeable*, consistent size difference between an average ML and an average Black Series or Classified. And they are able to dial in heights and sizes over time as we've seen later Black Series releases of specific characters get more accurate.

So it's definitely not a matter of "we just can't figure out how big this will be when it comes out of the mold". To a certain tolerance they absolutely can and the product proves it.

And as said, for stuff like the Pirate Kickstarter, that's a whole inch off scale, that's intentional. Those aren't 1/12 at all and shouldn't be marketed as such unless they're saying their human figures are all giants.

 

[Poe Ghostal]

While I certainly appreciate the vagaries of the production process, in this day and age you should be able to account for a lot of that - well, in theory at least.

Clearly, as we can see from the recent Nacelle Star Trek figures and Boss Fight having to mail out replacement Garfields, production issues persist. But I do think scale seems like one of the more solvable problems; you just have to try to plan ahead, to some degree.

All that said, let's not pretend there's not some deliberate fudging going on. There are figures that are obviously intended to be 7" scale but are called "1/12" for whatever reason - perhaps, as noted above, to suggest they will be compatible with the various ancillary 1/12 products like dioramas and accessories sets that are out there.

The 1/12 weapons in the Mezco One:12 Barbarian Slugfest kit are noticeably small in the hands of, say, a Savage Crucible figure - or even a Mythic Legions figure.

 

[TheSameIdiot]

I'm with you. If I were toy czar, I'd make these companies gradually edge toward their advertised scale. If Marvel Legends made their next Bucky Cap/Vulcan body 6" flat, collectors would drop the line. If they made it 6 3/8", then 6.25", and so on, it'd be workable. There's no reason that Marvel Legends is 6.5" scale, the Black Series is true 1/12, and Figma/SHF are their own weird 5" scale. 1/12 should be 1/12.

Same for 1/10. As you mention, the Chinese companies like InArt and Storm are the worst offenders. At least Storm stopped lying to us about their Collectibles line and gave us a true 1/12 line with Arena.

Most of these scale issues are not the manufacturers fault. It comes down to the tooling process and the materials they use. Certain plastics when cooled after exiting the molds will cause shrinkage, but other plastics do not.

They can largely account for these changes in production. Besides, a 7% change in size doesn't push a line from 6" to 6.5".

 

[JakeEkiss]

At least Storm stopped lying to us about their Collectibles line and gave us a true 1/12 line with Arena.

And in doing so proved it wasn't a manufacturing issue. They wanted an overscale line but to still have the "1/12" label. Now that they're giving us something closer to real 1/12 it's great. I'll buy so much of that line.