by craggy » Sat Apr 19, 2014 6:22 am
a toy being released as a Leader Class toy doesn't necessarily mean it is in scale with anything else.
For starters, scale in TFs is never going to be perfect. I think Alternators/Binaltech and other car only lines, where everyone turned into one of a tiny handful of alt modes, are the only toylines where scale is consistent. Get into the realms of TF fiction and the scale of robots compared to alt modes goes bye-bye.
So if, at first, you're able to accept that for the characters to be translated from their fictional representations to plastic toys there are going to be size discrepancies, you've got to realise that the manufacturers of these toys have two choices. They can either attempt to scale things mostly to alt-mode, or mostly to robot mode. Seeing as scaling to alt mode would mean a Soundwave that turned into a tapedeck would be the size of an SD card compared to a 3 or 4 foot long Starscream in jet mode, most manufacturers tend towards the robot mode scale, as the majority of Transformers characters vary in height only by a few head-heights.
The size differences between the bulk of the main TF cast in most series are analogous with those of the average humans in the real world. Were these characters human, Optimus Prime would likely be a tall, well build man, somewhere between 6foot 6 and 7foot. Megatron likely a few inches taller. Bumblebee would be at the opposite end of the 5th-95th percentile, being maybe around 5foot tall. Of course, being as these are alien robots, the character designs can branch out a little more into greater extremes of body shapes and heights. Laserbeak is obviously far smaller than the average for a Transformer, whilst Metroplex is one of the largest.
For Hasbro in particular, who have to have most of their toys fitting into a particular size box, size classes come into play. Legends/Legion/Cyberverse being the smallest, Basic/Scout/Commander being the next up, Deluxe being larger again, and so on. Time was, when the TF line started, the different sizes tended to be reserved more for specific groups of characters. All the Minibot characters were the equivalent of a Legends bot (going by pricing, at least) whereas the Autobot cars like Jazz or Wheeljack were more like our current Deluxes. There was a sort of scale to this, but it often didn't match up all that well to the way the characters were portrayed in the fiction. G1 Bumblebee is half the height of a G1 Autobot car, whilst in the cartoons and comics he tended to be drawn as coming up to the middle of their chests or their shoulders.
Now, in recent years, Hasbro has (presumably) found success in offering the major characters from their fiction across multiple size classes, allowing someone who wants to buy, lets say an Optimus Prime toy, to choose between a number of different toys at different price points. In the TFPrime line for example there were Commander, Voyager and "Leader" sized toys of Optimus Prime. These three toys were all in the same toyline, but as the character in the fiction did not change size, they're clearly not all in the same scale. Since the branding of the smaller figures as "Cyberverse" the Legion and Commander classes have mostly kept in the same scale, allowing for a collection of the cheaper figures to represent a mostly in-scale collection of the characters from the fiction. Similarly the Voyager and Deluxes have generally been in-scale with each other, with the average sized robots being Deluxe class and the larger ones getting the Voyager treatment. Sadly since the days of the AEC Trilogy, and the introduction of placing the same characters into multiple price-points/size classes, the larger classes have usually been used for the more recognisable characters (Prime and Bumblebee and maybe one or two other guys) so these are only at best in-scale with each other.
Titan Class Metroplex isn't really properly in-scale with anyone else, but given that there's always some discrepancy, the best fit for him really would be the Cyberverse/Legends size TFs. He's still large enough though that Deluxe and Voyager figures are still dwarfed by him in robot mode, so I can't blame anyone including him in that scale. However, stand him next to a Leader Prime or MP Seeker and the idea that he's the largest ever Transformer and changes into a city they can all walk about in starts to stretch the extent of my suspension of disbelief. Without actual real-world mass-shifting applied to the toys, its very unlikely we'll get a line of toys where they're all truly in-scale with each other.
Unless of course you make it using CGI models almost identical to the toys and don't apply overt mass-shifting in the fiction. Oh hi there, Beast Wars!
Now, do you understand scale?
assembling a Neo-G1/TF:TM cast. Please PM if you have (or know of) the following at a reasonable price: Classics or Henkei Astrotrain, Sunstreaker, Sideswipe, or 3rd Party iGear Ratchet and Ironhide.
Also looking for Universe Repugnus and Overbite, Frostbite and Longhorn and any Webdiver toys.
A big chunck of TF fans climbed onboard the 3rd party TF toy wagon. Citing they disliked the wrongly scaled classics,Generations toys as one of the main motivation reasons. Now years later,Those same chunnk of fans are trying there hardest to buy and match 3rd party TF toys that fit in the classics,Generations toy line scales. 
