Scale

Scale in the Transformers multiverse is, to put not too fine a point on it, screwed.

Virtually no generation, era, franchise, fiction, toyline or other incarnation of Transformers has presented scale in a consistent, logical or easily-believable fashion. Most fans would agree that one needs to either ignore it or accept it, lest they be tempted to actually explain away these problems and in the process undoubtedly fanwank themselves into oblivion.

However, this does not mean that the chronic scale problems of Transformers do not merit description.

Scale within toylines
As is generally well known, the early Generation 1 toyline, especially the entire pre-Movie lines, were created from repackaged and redecoed toys from several different Japanese transforming toylines. The crucial point being that they came from different toylines. All characters (well, virtually all; see below) should be in correct scale to each other as they all are supposed to represent real-world altmodes that can pass for correctly-scaled vehicles etc. However, since the Diaclone toys were not designed to be part of the same line as Microman toys, scale issue arise. While Diaclone figures such as Optimus Prime, Prowl and Hound are more-or-less in correct scale to each other, many of the Mini Vehicles from the New Microman line are clearly far too small by comparison. Even aside from the deformed penny-racer style proportions, even a comparatively small car such as a Volkswagen is disproportionately tiny when compared to a Porsche that should be in the same scale. The disparity becomes all the more obvious with other minibots such as Warpath and Seaspray whose altmodes would suggest that they should be many times their actual size.



Another glaring scale problem comes in the form of the Seekers, who turn into F-15 Eagles which, in real life, are 63.8 ft (19.44 m) long. Clearly not in scale with the Autobot cars then...

Neither, for that matter, are the Constructicons, despite also coming from the Diaclone line. Even more out-of-scale are the other Diaclone-born combiner team the Trainbots who, as the name implies, have train engine altmodes, considerably larger than cars and most construction equipment, yet their toys are among the smallest of the original Diaclone releases.

Even toys specifically designed to interact with each other often suffer from this problem. The Combaticons, for instance, are wildly out of scale to each other--Blast Off's space shuttle mode should be the largest by far, and Swindle should be significantly smaller than the others. Among the aforementioned Constructicons, Long Haul, like most dumptrucks in Transformers, is actually one of those gigantic, which would make him significantly bigger than his teammates.

Other scale problems come from characters who transform into the same (or very similar) altforms but whose toys are very different sizes. For example Air Raid transforms into and F-15 Eagle, but his toy is half the size of Starscream's. In reality they should be an identical size (in fact, Silverbolt, transforming into a Concorde passenger jet should in fact be one of the largest G1 Transformers with an Earth altmode). The same can be said for Breakdown, who, having a Lamborghini Countach altmode, should be in scale with Sunstreaker. This also goes for the other Stunticons and all the Special Teams/Scramble City-type combiners with Earth-based altmodes, whose toys are all out of scale to earlier waves. By the same token, Warpath should be roughly the same size as Blitzwing.

Speaking of Blitzwing, Triple-Changers create a whole new set of problems. Octane transforms from a roughly 60-foot tanker truck into a 200-foot plus jumbo jet. Broadside transforms from an Earth jet into an entire aircraft carrier, presumably sized to carry quite a few Earth jets. More recent series, such as Dreamwave's More Than Meets The Eye, suggest that this is possible due to a variety of sliding panels, essentially making the transformations akin to incredibly elaborate origami. You heard right; origami Transformers. Yup.

Also, from an in-universe logic perspective, the characters with role-play altmodes such as Megatron, Soundwave, Perceptor or Armada Laserbeak are scaled to be human(well, kid)-scale. Although size changing is obviously not possible for real toys (or at least, that's what Takara wants us to think...), this human-scaling makes in some cases for inordinately large robot modes, e.g. Blaster.

Most post-Movie G1 characters (and, for that mater, most post-G1 lines) are difficult to accurately scale, as they generally transform into "futuristic" or "Cybertonian" vehicles for which there are no real-world specifications, or indeed don't transform into vehicles at all. Therefore the scale of characters such as Hot Rod or Leobreaker are fairly arbitrary and can at best be estimated by their relative size to more scale-friendly characters within the same fictions, although most animation is highly inconsistent in this regard (see below). Nevertheless, if one presumes that most vehicle altmodes are intended to house human passengers, comparisons of toys such as Chromedome and Lightspeed suggest a scale disparity similar to other combiners.

There has only been one notable exception to all of this; the Alternators toyline, where every item is a 1:24-scale representation of a real car model, and thus remain in near-perfect scale with each other.

One last interesting case, related to the aforementioned Triple Changer difficulty, is when the toy is not in scale with itself. For example, 20th Anniversary Optimus Prime has wheels which are proportionally too small for a Freightliner truck, while similarly his rear section onto which a trailer would be hitched is much too thick. These out-of-proportion vehicle parts were necessary to give to his robot mode better robot proportions.

Scale within fictions


Scale issues abound within fictions, especially the G1 cartoon. A lot can be attributed to animation errors, or even "lazy animation". Size changing is rarely depicted on screen outside of characters such as Megatron and Blaster, but is rather implied (or, one could argue in many cases, inferred) in the following method: a character such as Astrotrain transforms in-frame from robot to shuttle with no visible expansion of size relative to his surroundings. Cut. In the following shot his fellow Decepticons are shown running into frame, suddenly tiny in stature so that they can board the shuttle. Although Astrotrain has not been shown to actually grow (in the way Megatron is usually seen to perceptibly shrink in-shot), one infers that it is more likely that Astrotrain has expanded rather than all his confederates have individually shrunk. The same goes for Omega Supreme and other "transport" characters.

Some scale problems appear to be arbitrary, for example Optimus Prime (and, indeed, most Transformers in general) is routinely shown as being throughly gargantuan, equal to several stories in hight and capable of cradling humans in the palm of one hand. In reality, Prime would probably be about 25-30 feet tall, at best. Conversely, Bumblebee is sometimes shown as being only a few feet taller than an average human, where in reality he would be around 10-15 feet tall. And those pesky Seekers remain a walking scale problem; in reality they would be amongst the largest Transformers of all and would tower over their Autobot adversaries, whereas the animation generally depicts character such as Thundercracker and Wheeljack as being approximately the same height.

In most cases, the G1 cartoon adopts approximations of the toy scale (with all its inherent problems) when depicting the characters in robot modes; Prime, Megatron and Soundwave are generally animated at the same height, Seekers and Autobot cars slightly shorter (although not as much shorter and unevenly so as the actual toys are), and Minibots are given a smaller stature again. However, these depictions were far from consistent.

Some fans interpret these discrepancies to also be the result of size changing, but this is debatable. If virtually all characters used mass-shifting (or whatever) to gain or drop just a few feet for no apparent reason (other than to make the animation more plausible), the technology would seem pointlessly mundane. Furthermore there is no strong evidence in the series to indicate that size changing truly is so widespread as opposed to the animation having a particular style to it that favors emphasizing the hugeness of the Cybertronians.

It is worth noting that the live-action movie has taken great pains to avoid size-changing and out-of-scale issues among characters with Earth-based alternate modes. This is sometimes reflected in the choice of vehicle (Optimus Prime is a long-nosed truck cab in order to offer more mass to make a taller robot mode out of) or the design of their robot modes (Starscream's robot mode is nearly as wide as it is tall, with shorter, digitigrade-style legs so the massive jet-former won't end up twice as tall as Optimus). Though in the case of Blackout, his huge alternate mode simply results in a huge, hulking, towering robot mode.

Combiner scale
Combiner characters are often depicted as far larger than the sum of their parts. Characters such as Devastator and Menasor are frequently shown being as tall as large buildings, sometimes even the size of small skyscrapers. When one thinks that their individual limbs are comprised of mere cars and construction vehicles, this becomes patently absurd. Logically, this can only be accounted for by serious size-change-o-rama and yet, again, no clear depiction of this process actually taking place is ever shown in the case of combiners.

Superion, however, actually would be fairly massive, if one considers the much larger real-world size of his component parts.

Show scale vs. toy scale
Some characters have great discrepancies between their cartoon scale and their toy scale. "Giant" characters such as Omega Supreme are, even aside from any size changing for transport purposes, clearly not in the same scale in toy form as they are depicted on screen. Cassette characters such as Rumble's toys are roughly the same height as most Minibots, while in the show they are usually portrayed as human-sized (which is odd, considering that Soundwave is capable of expanding to massive size).

Rodimus Prime and Ultra Magnus are usually shown to be of a fairly similar height (although Magnus is much bulkier), whereas there is a considerable difference between the size of their toys. By the same token, Rodimus is always depicted as being an equal stature to his opposing leader Galvatron, whereas the toy Galvatron is instead the same size as Magnus. Optimus Prime is also usually shown as only a head or so shorter than Magnus (if that), which gets very strange when you realise that a recolour of Prime's toy forms but a small part of Magnus' robot mode.



Cybertron Metroplex and the other citizens of Gigantion are depicted as gargantuan in animation, whereas the toys are merely among the normal boxed size-classes. (Although, the Japanese Galaxy Force release, dubbed "Megalo Convoy", included an exclusive redeco of the Heroes of Cybertron Optimus Prime to indicate the "correct" scale.) Within the animation, though, this causes problems with their Mini-Con partners, who are depicted as human-sized in robot mode by themselves, but when directly interacting with their larger partners, retain their size in relation to the toy... meaning some temporarily-gigantic Mini-Cons!

Pretender scale
The G1 concept of Pretenders had some interesting scale issues. In the original comic the pretenders appeared fairly literally as their toy counterparts; normal-sized robots inside humanoid shells. The logical result of this was that the Autobot Pretenders were depicted as giant-sized humans. Which ain't much of a disguise. By comparison, the Decepticons merely look like garden-variety giant Saban monsters. In one issue of the comic Cloudburst transformed into jet mode, and his shell, as well as Landmine, who was inside his shell, boarded him. It was difficult to tell if Cloudburst was supposed to have grown in size, or if his shell and Landmine had shrunk to fit inside.

In the U.S. toy commercials Classic Pretenders Grimlock, Bumblebee and Jazz were depicted as small enough to fit in Powermaster Optimus Prime's hand, so it is assumed they were human sized.

Although the original American cartoon did not feature any Pretenders, the Japanese-only continuity did, in their series Super-God Masterforce. Here the Pretenders were not shells so much as ill-defined wholistic transformations which involved size changing, allowing the large Autobots to achieve human size and convincingly pass themselves off as such. The Decepticons, by comparison chose to retain their gigantic proportions when in Pretender-mode.

Although never depicted in any of their actual fiction, Dreamwave's More Than Meets The Eye profile book included a description of their continuity's take on the Pretender concept. Something of a fusion of the above two, it described a physical shell that utilizes shrinking technology to achieve the Masterfore-like capacity to pass the wearer off as a real human (or other bipedal lifeform of choice). Intriguingly, the profile also obliquely implies that such Pretender technology would/could later lead to the development of the synthetic faux-organic beast-mode tech of the Beast Era.

Mini-Con scale
The Mini-Cons of the Unicron Trilogy are small robots who stand approximately the same height as a human. However, they almost all transform into vehicles (of either Earth or Cybertronian design) which are clearly modeled to include cockpits etc. for carrying passengers, and yet they are obviously too small to accommodate humans (the only exceptions being Grindor, Sureshock and High Wire, who become small one-man vehicles... well, Energon Grindor doesn't). Who then these smaller-than-human passengers could possibly be is something of a mystery, setting aside the posibility that the mini-cons simply scan "normal" vehicle modes and resize them to fit their smaller bodies.

In the Cybertron cartoon, the Recon Mini-Con Team retain their slightly-larger-than-human robot modes, but their alternate modes are large enough to contain a human passenger.

Micromaster scale
By the same token as Mini-Cons, Micromasters are depicted as being roughly human-sized, and yet virtually all turn into real (albeit generic) earth vehicles that are patently incapable of fitting human passangers inside them. The illogic of this was never really addressed in contemporaneous G1 fictions, however the Dreamwave miniseries Micromasters hinted at some kind of explanation, but it was pretty much bollocks. The Marvel comic series featured some of them size-changing to vehicles that definitely were to human scale (as humans got in them), but this wasn't applied consistently (it also brings up the question of how much energy the downsizing really saves if they have to change their mass every time they transform).

Like their larger G1 brothers, the Micromaster line was plagued with scale problems even within the line itself, as all Micromasters conformed to a virutally identical robot-mode height yet transformed into all manner of vehicles which would be drastically different sizes to each other if they were supposed to be in relative scale. Furthermore, some Micromaster bases transformed into vehicle altmodes much larger than their operators, creating a further scale headache. However, there is no indication in any fiction that the Micromasters were, unlike the rest of G1, even supposed to have any accurate scale, even compared to each other. What, therefore, was the point of their "realistic" altmodes (other than to sell cute mini-toys) is anyone's guess.

Citybots


The characters Metroplex, Trypticon, Fortress Maximus and Scorponok each have altmodes which are described as a "city". However, the scale at which they could plausibly house enough humans, let alone Transformers to be in any way reasonably defined as a "city" would suggest a robot-mode scale that would make Godzilla look like a gecko. No fiction to date, not even the very large depictions in the Japanese Headmasters cartoon, even begins to approximate the size that a true "citybot" would logically become. In reality, the grossly-undersized depiction of Unicron (see below) would probably be closer to the scale of an actual transformed city. Which is ironic, as in Season 3 of the G1 cartoon Unicron requires citybot eyes to replace his own shattered ones. That's right, citybot eyes fit a planetbot. Explain that one...

Rare examples which even suggest such a realistic city scale include occasional Japanese promotional art (e.g. see left).

Furthermore, there is virtually no way to reconcile the "city" altmodes of the actual toys with any believable use of the term. Using windows as even a vague scale, they would hardly qualify as a city block. The cartoon episode Thief in the Night makes some headway in explaining this via an establishing shot that shows Metroplex to be only a small smaller sub-section of the "actual" Autobot City, although this was not repeated. It seems that in Transformer terms, "city" is better read as "large building".

Although little fiction to date has significantly featured the Headmaster leaders fulfilling their "city" roles, they have in the Japanese-exclusive cartoons been employed in their tertiary modes as massive starships capable of transporting and housing many normal-sized transformers. Conversely, the Marvel G1 comic depicted Fort Max and Scorpy as merely "large-standard" size characters, of an equal height to Powermaster Optimus Prime and, in some UK issues, even the same as Rodimus Prime (to be fair, Powermaster Prime was often drawn "undersized" in the comics). Parts of Time Wars were notable in this department for featuring characters as diverse as Goldbug, Fortress Maximus and Blaster as all being the exact same height.

Planets


Scale when it comes to planets is almost so fraught it's actively painful. The logic problems of describing citybots as "cities" is a thousand times worse if Unicron is supposed to have a planet-sized altmode, and that Cybertron is in turn supposed to be in scale with him. Although different fictions have compared both Cybertron/Primus and Unicron to drastically different Sol-system planets, the fact remains that they are supposed to be planets, and yet across most fictions they are shown in such insane scale-relation to characters that it would suggest they are barely the size of a very, very small moon (or a space station).

To start with, Cybertron itself was depicted throughout G1 as having buildings visible from space. Although this was clearly intended to make it immediately obvious that the planet was entirely technological in nature, it actually makes no sense whatsoever, as such structures would have to be the size of small continents to actually be visible from such a distance. If the buildings were in fact supposed to be Transformers-scale skyscrapers (or even 2000 A.D. style mega-bocks), Cybertron would therefore be barely a fraction the size of Earth's Moon. By comparison, the rather Coruscant-like orbit-views of Cybertron in the Beast Machines cartoon may be less distinctive or recognizably "Cybertronian", but are far more believable.



Unicron, however, is a much more extreme problem. If one presumes that no obvious size changing occurs during his transformation (and really, why would he want to become smaller?), he would be so massive that any shot that features even a part of his body, let alone the whole thing, would be of such a scale that no normal Transformer, however massive, would even be visible in the same frame. His depiction in the The Transformers: The Movie in which he directly interacts with normal-sized Cybertronian characters is blatantly absurd (regardless of how totally phat it looks). Shots such as the Dinobots fleeing his grasping hand, a starship penetrating his eye or especially picking up Galvatron between his thumb and forefinger before swallowing him (or, similarly in the comic, impaling Brainstorm on his fingernail before crunching him between his teeth) bend any concept of plausible scale beyond breaking point. If Unicron is the size of a planet, his hands would be the size of continents. This would make Galvatron the size of Great Britain.

There is no possible explanation for any of this. Just go with it.

The depiction of Unicron's scale in Armada was (very debatably) a slight improvement, at least in as much as the concept of physical interaction (or much bodily movement for that matter) with such tiny beings was not even attempted, preferring instead to communicate with normal Transformers by possessing another body in their own scale. Nevertheless, shots featuring Thrust and Megatron standing on his neck region are still farcically out of scale.

Beast Era scale
In the Beast Era scale is not such a large issue, although it certainly does crop up in less obvious (depending on your point of view) ways.

Real world scale
Although the Beast Warriors all seem to exist quite happily in their own relative scale, their scale in relation to the real-world animals they have adopted as altmodes is more problematic. While the "giant insect" characters such as Waspinator and Inferno are obviously not in real world scale, when considered carefully virtually none of the characters actually are. The only characters who have been clearly depicted interacting with real members of their adopted species are Cheetor and Tigatron, who (to take the former example) is seen attempting to interact with other cheetahs in Beast Wars, Part 1, who react in fright. Cheetor was shown here to be in the same scale as real cheetahs, which effectively makes him the measuring stick for all other characters. Rattrap is therefore obviously a monstrously huge rat, about the size of a large dog, Rhinox is a rather small rhinoceros, and Optimus Primal is probably a roughly normal-sized gorilla. However, Megatron is therefore an positively dwarfish specimen of a Tyrannosaurus rex, possibly closer to a Nanotyrannus.

The Beast Wars writers once noted that first-season Rattrap was five feet (1.5 metres) tall, and that the other characters can be scaled around that. This would make Rattrap one of the few Transformers who are shorter than the average adult human in robot mode.

In their few interactions with (adult) protohumans, the Cybertronian characters seem between twice and three times the average height of protohumans. Considering human ancestors really were smaller than modern humans, this scale issue is not as extreme as it may appear, but the point deserves addressing.

Scale relative to G1


Size changing appears to be a thing of the past by the Beast Era, as the majority of the Cybertronian race seems to have considerably downgraded in size, apparently due to the Maximal Upgrade Program (although this is of course a backwards rationalization, since the show's basic premise requires the characters to transform into (vaguely) normal-sized animals, compared to the G1 characters transforming into large vehicles etc.). When entering the Ark, the Beast Warriors are very small compared to the dormant G1 characters, especially Optimus Prime. They are roughly the size humans should be (but usually weren't) depicted in relation to these characters.

On the other hand Robot Masters depicted G1 and BW characters like Optimus Prime and Optimus Primal as being exactly the same size. Yup. It's possible that passage through the Blasty Zone may somehow account for this discrepancy,

Toy scale vs. cartoon scale


The first season's cast of Beast Wars characters were not designed in the same relative scale to each other as depicted in the toyline, although from Season 2 onwards the scales (and general toy-accuracy) of the cartoon became much more consistent with the toys.

For example, of the Season 1 Maximal crew, Dinobot, Cheetor, Tigatron and Rhinox are all from the same deluxe size class, while Airazor and Rattrap are considerably smaller basics. Optimus Primal, an ultra, stands at virtually twice the size of the deluxes. In the show, Dinobot is the tallest, followed by Rhinox and a slightly shorter Optimus Primal, shorter again is Tigatron, while shorter still is Cheetor (despite being an identical mold) and Airazor, while Rattrap is marginally the shortest, but by no means to such a degree as his toy would suggest.

The Beast Machines' toyline was far worse in terms of scale discrepancies with its cartoon, with the tallest character Silverbolt becoming the shortest (show-featured) Maximal toy, and similarly the massive Tankor was reduced to a tiny basic-class (well, in Japan anyway, but the Tank Drones that his BWR toy was redecoed from were supposed to be the same size anyway). And, sadly, the most show-accurate toy in the line (well, sorta in the line...) "Air Attack Optimus Primal" was rendered as an enormous supreme figure, completely incompatible with the other toys.