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Subject: 
Minifig scale?
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.general
Date: 
Mon, 15 Jan 2001 17:05:46 GMT
Viewed: 
564 times
  
I think the concept of "Minifig scale" is a little weird.  Making complaints
about scale of a model that is supposed to be built to "minifig scale" is
akin to complaining about the scale of those old weeble-wobble toys.
Imagine someone saying this:
"The scale of that truck is way off, if you assume the standard
weeble-wobble man to be roughly six feet tall."
First, imagine a six-foot tall weeble wobble man [1].  It would be one of
the most disturbing things I can imagine.  A six foot tall minifig would not
be far behind.  His head would be the size of a drum from a washing machine.
He would be four feet wide, and his feet would be 18" square.  Creepy.

I guess I have two points:
1) Minifigs are lego-ish representations of humanoids, and it does not make
sense to use their height as *the* standard for minifig-scale building.
With this in mind, I think it's impossible to say a minifig scale dump truck
should be 23.5 (or some other specific number) of studs high.  There has to
be a degree of flexibility in minifig scale.
2) Because of the size of studs, the length/width dimensions are more
constraining than in height.  So, in my opinion, it makes more sense to peg
minifig width to human width rather than minifig height to human height.  Or
better yet, somewhere in between.

In conclusion, a more suitable "minifig scale" would be:
1 minifig height = 4 ± 1 feet.
Of course this is strictly a statement of my opinion, NOT a criticism of all
the models out there built to the 1 minifig height = 6 feet scale, which are
almost entirely better than anything I can build.

Jeff J

[1] If you don't remember, or are too young to remember, weeble wobbles were
a toy in the 70s.  The people were little eggs (no limbs or anything) with a
hunk of something heavy at the bottom, so they never fell over.  They were
like those inflatable punching clowns that keep standing up every time you
hit them, but only an inch tall.  "Weeble wobbles wobble but they don't fall
down!"



Message has 4 Replies:
  Re: Minifig scale?
 
Hehe, "minifig-scale" actually is my favourite excuse for designing Battletech-models which in fact are way too small. Of course, this way it doesn't cost a fortune to build them, an important aspect with almost 100 models on my site ;) Primus BuS (...) (23 years ago, 15-Jan-01, to lugnet.general)
  Re: Minifig scale?
 
(...) Not only all of your points, but figure that a "minifig scale" car means it seats one comfortably, according to what we tend to get from Lego, and the concept gets even weirder. Maybe one minifig is actually four of 'em? -JDF (23 years ago, 16-Jan-01, to lugnet.general)
  Re: Minifig scale?
 
(...) Quite agreed. Only if someone has expressed their 'minifig scale' can you say that their model does not comply with their own assumed scale... And, as noted before, minifigs are NOT human-shaped. If they were, they'd either be tall and fat (...) (23 years ago, 16-Jan-01, to lugnet.general)
  (canceled)
 

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