Scale

And the truck's how big...?

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

Virtually no era, franchise, fiction, toyline or other incarnation of Transformers has presented scale in a logical or believable fashion. (There are, of course, a few rare exceptions, detailed below.) Most fans agree that one must either ignore it or accept it, lest they be tempted to explain these problems and in the process fanwank themselves into oblivion.

However, the scale problems of Transformers still merit description.

“	Clearly, the pitiful humans at Hasbro are so overwhelmed by the awesomeness of Cybertronian life forms that they can't get the scale right.	”
—Starscream, Star Scream's #23

Scale within toylines

Toys out of scale with others in the same line

That little guy — who comes from the same toyline as all those vehicles — is supposed to be a normal-sized human. Yeeeah.

The early Generation 1 toy line, especially the pre-movie releases, were rebranded and redecoed toys from several different Japanese toy lines. The crucial point is that the toy lines were initially unrelated. The characters should be in scale with each other as they all have real-world alternate modes that (should) pass for real vehicles. However, since Diaclone toys were not part of the same line as Microman toys, scale issues arose. Diaclone figures such as Optimus Prime, Prowl and Hound are more-or-less in correct scale with each other (though problems already arise with Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, whose alternate modes are based on the same car yet are not quite the same size), but many of the Mini Vehicles from the New Microman line are clearly far too small by comparison. Even aside from their deformed penny-racer proportions, a Porsche 924 Micro Change toy is disproportionately tiny when compared to a Porsche 935 Diaclone toy. The disparity becomes even more obvious with Minibots such as Warpath (a tank) and Seaspray (a hovercraft), who 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 19.4 m (63.8 feet) long. Correctly scaled, this would make their robot modes colossal compared to most Autobots. Similarly, the Constructicons, despite also coming from the Diaclone line, are too small, in particular Long Haul, whose alternate mode is an "earth mover" type of dump truck, which are gigantic in real life. Far worse is the other Diaclone combiner team, the Trainbots, who have train engine altmodes, yet their toys are among the smallest of the Diaclone releases.

Transformers are currently formalised to a variety of size classes, which dictate the approximate cost and dimensions of a figure. Consequently, if the powers that be release toys of two characters in the same line in the same size class, they're going to come out in the same size. Even if one character's a twenty-metre fighter jet and the other's a five-metre pickup truck. So don't expect this one to go away any time soon.

Toys slightly out of scale with others in the same assortment

Sometimes toys that ship in the same assortment or size class have similar alternate modes (i.e. two cars or two planes), but are not quite in scale with each other. One possible reason for this is that one of them would be considerably smaller than the other one in real life if they were perfectly in scale. For example, Movie Jazz's Pontiac Solstice alternate mode is a tiny car, and any size class that includes both him and Bumblebee (a Chevrolet Camaro) will result in scale problems between the toys. Hasbro could have made Jazz smaller, but since the main limit for a size class is the weight of a toy, not its size (as long as it fits into the standardized packaging, that is), they decided that scale problems are more acceptable than selling a tiny Deluxe Class toy when there's still room in the budget for more plastic. With the Human Alliance assortment, Hasbro have taken a different approach by trying to keep the vehicles in scale (roughly 1:24) and adding accessories and other characters that turn into motorcycles for smaller cars such as Jazz, Skids and Mudflap.

Other toys with comparable alternate modes that are slightly out of scale with each other are Generation 1 Sunstreaker and Sideswipe (mentioned above), who have the same basic alternate mode (with a few differences), and Universe Legends Class Autobot Jazz and Rodimus.

Toys out of scale within teams

Wait till you see the artist's rendition of a scale-accurate version.

Even toys specifically designed to interact with each other suffer from this problem. The Combaticons are wildly out of scale to each other—Blast Off's Space Shuttle mode should dwarf Swindle, with the others somewhere in between. Instead, they're about the same size. Among the Constructicons, Long Haul is designed to look like a gigantic "earth-mover" mining truck. He should be able to carry all his teammates in his bed, with some crowding. Similarly, Silverbolt (a Concorde jet) is dramatically undersized compared to his fighter-jet Aerialbot teammates. These scale problems are necessary to avoid misproportioned gestalt forms.

Don't even ask about the Protectobots with their motorcycle and helicopter limbs...

This problem isn't just limited to the Generation 1 combiners either: Revenge of the Fallen Supreme Constructicon Devastator has a massive mining excavator form the lower portion of the torso, with your everyday type of cement mixer truck that's almost the same size forming the upper portion of the torso. An "earth mover"-type dump truck that should be about the same size as the excavator forms one tiny leg, while the other leg is formed by a bulldozer that should be slightly smaller. The movie circumvents this problem by adding additional construction vehicles in the mix, which are ignored by the toy line. The Legends Class version of Devastator only adds another dump truck for the torso, which doesn't really improve things since all the individual components are still more or less the same size.

Same alternate mode, different sizes

Other scale problems come from characters who transform into the same (or similar) alternate modes, but whose toys are different sizes. For example, the original Air Raid transforms into an F-15 Eagle, but his toy is half the size of the original Starscream's. The same can be said for the Lamborghini Countach Breakdown, who should be the same size as Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, not significantly smaller. These discrepancies are also seen in the other Scramble City-style combiners with Earth altmodes, whose toys are all smaller than similar earlier toys.

Multiple scales of same character

Oh great. And I thought Bulkhead was confused...

Starting with Beast Machines, many franchises have released multiple versions of the same character in different size classes, most often the leader characters. Originally, the intent was apparently to make the popular Optimus and Megatron characters available at lower price points than just the large and expensive "Leader" class, so that children with less money would not miss out, and perhaps persuading completist-minded collectors to buy multiple versions of one character.

While this introduces a nice range of options for the discerning collector, it can also lead to some problems. Beast Machines, for example, featured three different Cheetor toys. The Supreme size toy was so large it could not interact with most of the other toys from the line (based on the cartoon, he's maaaaybe in scale with Nightscream and Air Attack Optimus Primal, the later of whom wasn't released until three years later). The Deluxe Cheetor, on the other hand, was too small to match scales with most of the other toys (again, using the cartoon as a yardstick). Anyone looking within the toyline for notions of a "correct" scale between the characters would be stymied by the multiple size classes and the lack of real-world scale references.

Other instances of multiple-size characters are more clear cut; the Spy Changer incarnations of various Robots in Disguise characters, for instance, are simply scaled-down representations of the same characters in the same bodies, not meant to interact with the much larger "main" toys, as are the later "Legends of Cybertron" toys in Cybertron. Other multiple-toy scale differences include intentionally simplified forms, such as the Fast Action Battlers, which simply make all the characters the same size, with no attempt at matching scales.

Multiple-scale characters usually aren't meant to cross-interact. A rare exception is live-action Blackout, who came with a tiny (and correctly scaled) version of Scorponok. A much larger Deluxe version of Scorponok is also meant to interact with the same Blackout toy, despite the ridiculous scale disparity (and the fact that this means Blackout can have two Scorponoks of radically different size clipped to him simultaneously.)

Multiple toy sizes are generally irrelevant to the fiction, though the Cybertron cartoon featured Starscream inflating to planetary size, presumably in response to the super-large "King Starscream" toy available at the time.

Toys out of scale with themselves

Kill me. Just... kill me now.

Triple Changers create a whole new set of problems. The original Astrotrain transforms from a 21-meter (70-foot) locomotive to a 56-meter (184-foot) Space Shuttle. Octane's original body transforms from a 20-meter (60-foot) tanker truck into a 65-meter (200-foot) jumbo jet. Broadside transforms from an Earth fighter jet of indeterminate model (let's pretend for the sake of argument that he's supposed to be an F-14 and say he's 18 meters (61 feet) long) into an entire aircraft carrier, approximately 333 meters (1,092 feet) long.

The newer versions of Astrotrain and Octane (aka "Tankor"), while changing the specifics of their alternate modes, really don't improve on the general size disparity all that much.

Even a two-mode toy can have this problem. 20th Anniversary Optimus Prime has wheels which are pretty tiny for a Freightliner truck, while his rear hitch section is too thick. These out-of-proportion vehicle parts were necessary to give his robot mode show-accurate proportions.

Toys with roleplay alternate modes

The characters with roleplay altmodes such as Generation 1 Megatron, Soundwave, Perceptor, or Armada Laserbeak are scaled to be real-world human-scale (well, kid-scale). Since the size changing seen in the fiction is not possible for real toys (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's toy, in robot mode, is taller than most other Transformers.

The opposite problem is seen with Masterpiece Megatron, whose robot mode is in scale with Masterpiece Optimus Prime. The result is that, while he may transform into a very accurately-proportioned handgun, it's unmistakably much larger than the real thing. (Not that this has stopped him being widely banned as a "realistic firearm replica"....)

Fanciful altmodes

Characters with alternate modes that are not meant to be replicas of real-world things (or at least, close enough to while being legally-distinct from said things) are difficult to accurately scale, as they generally transform into futuristic or Cybertronian vehicles whose size we don't really know... or, indeed, they don't transform into vehicles at all. The scale of characters such as the original Dinobots, Hot Rod or Leobreaker is fairly arbitrary and can only be estimated by their relative size to other characters within the fiction, although most fiction is highly inconsistent in this regard (see below). Nevertheless, if one assumes that most vehicle altmodes are intended for human-sized passengers, comparing toys such as Chromedome with Lightspeed suggests the scale problem continues.

Big toys

It goes without saying that the city-bot and planetbot toys (such as Fortress Maximus and Unicron) are not remotely to scale with normal Transformer toys. While they are indeed large toys, they're only two to five times bigger than typical Transformer toys, and thus transform into "cities" and "planets" about the (relative) size of a bungalow. The scale problems extend to the details. Some of the citybot toys have visible windows, which are too large for a city, suggesting instead a medium-sized building.

However, it's hard to begrudge Hasbro not offering us a Primus toy the size of an asteroid. Where would we keep it?

Action Masters

A car riding inside a car. Wheeljack, you are a either a genius or completely nuts.

The Action Master vehicles were designed to take advantage of the fact that the Action Master figures were all the same size. They can each pilot each other's vehicles or ride as a passenger. With the vehicles as a frame of reference, it seems we should take it as fact that all of the Action Masters are literally the same size, even characters such as Bumblebee and Devastator. Did Devastator shrink?

Then again, the vehicles pose even more problems: Prowl, who still sports car kibble, rides a motorcycle, Wheeljack (who used to transform into a car himself) drives a sports car, and Optimus Prime steers a massive 18-wheeler truck, despite his own chest still being the front end of a truck cab. Did Nucleon shrink the Transformers to human size, or are these just gargantuan vehicles?

Of particular note, Wheeljack's Turbo Racer is based on a Ferrari Testarossa, and the Action Master Jackpot figure (a new character created specifically for the Action Masters lineup) sports kibble that indicates he once used to transform into a Ferrari Testarossa himself!

Size class cross-compatibility

With standardized size classes and mixed-faction assortments being the norm these days, scale issues are a given. For example, the first wave of Classics Deluxes featured Autobots Bumblebee and Rodimus, two cars, and Decepticons Starscream, a modified F-15 Eagle fighter jet, and Astrotrain, a Triple Changer who turns into a bullet train locomotive and a modified NASA Space Shuttle orbiter, all roughly the same size in robot mode but obviously not the same scale in their alternate modes.

However, with the increasing prevalence of multiple toys of the same character in different size classes, particularly enforced by the live-action film series, it is technically possible to have somewhat more accurate scale combinations. The Legends Class and its successor, Cyberverse, allows Autobots with cars as their alternate modes to be roughly in scale with Deluxe or Voyager-sized Decepticons that turn into aircraft. Likewise, the Legends Class version of Revenge of the Fallen Arcee, a motorcycle, is more or less in scale with Deluxe-sized Autobots with car alternate modes.

Finally, toys that are more or less in scale with each other... yet Hasbro insists they are not.

Hasbro does not often take advantage of this possible compatibility with store exclusive giftsets and "bonus" packs. Even when toys with considerable size differences are sold in the same pack, combinations such as a Leader-sized Optimus Prime (which would be in scale with Deluxe-sized Autobots with car alternate modes) with the much smaller Legends Class versions of Bumblebee and Jazz or the large Ultimate Bumblebee toy with the much smaller Deluxe-sized toys of Scorponok (who should be roughly the same size as Bumblebee) and Brawl (who should be considerably larger than either of them) are fairly common. The Revenge of the Fallen "Shanghai Showdown" multi-pack with Demolishor's Voyager-sized toy and the ice cream truck versions of Skids and Mudflap (whose combined alternate mode is Deluxe-sized) is closer, but truly scale-accurate multi-packs like the (unreleased) Transformers (2010) "Sideways Sneak Attack" pack with a Deluxe-sized Sideways (who transforms into a car) and the aforementioned Legends Class version of Arcee and two redecos of her as Chromia and Elita-1 are rare exceptions. A particularly odd example is the Revenge of the Fallen "The Fury of Fearswoop" three-pack, which features a Deluxe-sized Fearswoop (who transforms into a plane) and Legends Class versions of Sideswipe and Mudflap (who turn into cars), making them more or less in scale with each other... yet the on-packaging bio states that Fearswoop has "grown to immense size".

Intentional attempts at a consistent scale

That sure is one big motorcycle...

There have been precious few exceptions to all of this scale weirdness in the toys. However, the Alternators toyline, where every toy is a 1:24-scale representation of a real car, and thus in perfect scale with each other, was the first to buck the trend. Unfortunately, for practical reasons this limits the choice of altmodes. A Blast Off (Space Shuttle) toy in scale with the Alternators toys would be 1.6 meters (5.1 feet) long, while a Broadside (aircraft carrier) toy at that scale would be over 12 meters (40 feet)! Hasbro actually displayed mock-ups for an unproduced line of "military" Transformers in scale with Alternators during the BotCon 2007 Hasbro Tour; two of them recycled parts of Armada Unicron, and were thus Supreme-sized, which made said potential toyline not particularly commercially viable for Hasbro.

The direct—and indirect—successors to Alternators also maintained a mostly consistent internal scale. The Transformers: Binaltech Asterisk and Kiss Players made use of the same sculpts, only with added human female driver figures... which were woefully small compared to the cars they came with. This would repeat itself with the "Human Alliance" toys for Revenge of the Fallen: The cars/robots are all roughly the right size compared to each other (Skids and Mudflap are even smaller, squatter toys and come with sub-Scout-sized motorcycle and robots to make up for it), but their human drivers are all too small. (Amusingly, Frenzy seems to be about right.) In fact, the size differences have even increased: The 2010 Transformers line introduced an even smaller scale for the driver figures, including new versions of Sam Witwicky and Mikaela Banes that are smaller than their Revenge of the Fallen predecessors. The new scale for the driver figures continues with Dark of the Moon, which introduced Scout-sized robot figures that had one-man vehicle modes in a slightly larger scale, resulting in undersized drivers riding oversized motorcycles. Conversely, the Kmart exclusive Dark of the Moon "Autobot Daredevil Squad" multi-pack couples a redeco of the original Revenge of the Fallen version of Sam with a redeco of Revenge of the Fallen Deluxe Class Cannon Bumblebee, resulting in a large human with a small Chevrolet Camaro he couldn't possibly fit into even if the Bumblebee toy were designed with exterior space to house a driver.

Alternity would follow in Alternators's footsteps with a series of smaller 1:32-scale licensed cars... as well as stuffing characters who traditionally don't have automobile alternate modes into modern-day civilian vehicles. That these toys represent hyper-evolved beings most of the time make it all the more head-scratch-inducing.

Scale within fictions

Scale issues abound within the fiction, especially the Generation 1 cartoon. Some can be attributed to animation errors, such as layering problems,¹²³ but some "errors" were deliberate choices, for a variety of reasons.

Fictional scale vs. toy scale

Frighteningly toy-accurate.

Actually, disturbing fiction is probably more of a concern than scale issues.

The original Transformers fictions often depict characters to the same relative scale as the toys, which duplicates the intra-toyline problems described above. The cartoon, for example, shows Optimus, Megatron and Soundwave as about the same height, Seekers and Autobot cars as slightly shorter (though not as much as the toys are), and Minibots as smaller yet. This scale was carried over to their vehicle forms, resulting in differently-sized cars that, based on real world measurements, should be virtually the same size.

For another example, the Marvel comics portrayed the Pretenders as literal interpretations of their toys: 60-foot humans with full-scale Transformers inside. The "disguise" aspect of this was later explained by having Landmine and Cloudburst encounter giant, transformer-sized humanoids on an alien planet which made them appear to be of a "normal" scale.

I know he's meant to be big, but holy crap, dude!

Transformers fiction commonly shrinks or inflates characters, relative to their toy sizes. "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.

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 realize that a redeco of Prime's toy forms but a small part of Magnus' robot mode.

Airazor picks the Ultra-class figure.

The cast of Beast Wars were size-tweaked quite a bit, relative to the toyline. The most noticeable problem is Optimus Primal, who has an Ultra toy (the "level four" size, almost twice the size of the "level three" Mega next-largest Maximal toys), but is shorter than both Dinobot and Rhinox (both of whom are "level two" Deluxe sized toys). Further, Cheetor and Tigatron's toys use the same (Deluxe) mold, but Tigatron is a head taller in the show (both because tigers are larger than cheetahs, and because Cheetor is "a kid"). New and altered characters in later seasons were generally more consistent in size (and appearance) with the toys. This problem was magnified when the Generation 1 characters cameoed in the series. Megatron is a Tyrannosaurus rex but is shown in The Agenda Part 3, as being much smaller than Optimus Prime.

An example of how small Beast Wars Megatron is compared to Optimus Prime.

The Beast Machines' toyline was far worse in size discrepancies with the cartoon. Of the Maximals featured in the show, the tallest character, Silverbolt, is the shortest toy, while the diminutive Nightscream is a massive Ultra-class toy. And, sadly, the most show-accurate toy, Air Attack Optimus Primal, is a ginormous Supreme figure, towering over the other toys. (Weirdly, the King Kong-like size of this toy became canon in one specific micro-continuity. Prime Spark)

I lost thirty tons, thanks to the Jump-Cut! Thank you, Jump-Cut!

In the otherwise fairly toy-scale-savvy Unicron Trilogy, 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. Within the animation, this causes problems with their Mini-Con partners, who are depicted as human-sized in robot mode by themselves, but when shown directly interacting with their larger partners, are scaled up right along with their partner... resulting in some temporarily gigantic Mini-Cons!

The Japanese Galaxy Force release of Metroplex, dubbed "Megalo Convoy", included an exclusive redeco of the Legends of Cybertron Optimus Prime toy to indicate the "correct" scale.

The Animated franchise has its share of scale problems when comparing its toyline to the cartoon (not helped by multiple releases of some characters in different sizes—see above), with several characters seeming roughly one size class too small, such as the Dinobots being a mix of one Voyager size and two Deluxes, Sentinel Prime looking rather diminutive as a Deluxe, and, most egregiously, Lugnut as a very squat Voyager who's shorter than even some Deluxes. (As with Voyager-class Bulkhead, more of his mass went into his width, plus his weapon takes away some from his robot mode.) Conversely, the traditionally stunted Bumblebee is marginally too tall and bulky to be in correct scale to his otherwise fairly accurate core teammates, assuming one includes Voyager Optimus and Leader Bulkhead in their lineup. In fact, Animated is one of those toylines where you're not quite sure who you're supposed to base correct scale on.

Inconsistent portrayal

No! Don't wash him in hot water! He'll...

...too late.

Even if a size was decided on, it often didn't remain consistent. The height of the cartoon's Skyfire, just to name one, frequently varied between episodes.

The Generation 1 Marvel comic is notorious for changing the relative sizes of various characters. A single Transformer's size is rarely consistent between artists. For example, Rumble and Frenzy vary in height relative to Soundwave. A panel in the "Time Wars" shows Goldbug, Ironhide, Scattershot, and Swoop all the same height. Omega Supreme, titanic in his original appearance, Command Performances! shrunk steadily in subsequent issues until he was not much taller than the average Transformer. Fortress Maximus suffered a similar problem, shrinking in size even though he was explicitly rebuilt to be twice as tall as the average Transformer.

Scale can even be inconsistent within the same story thanks to changing artists: In the Marvel UK story "Ladies' Night", a ginormous Swindle picks up a tiiiiny military Jeep with one hand, implying that he grew to humongous proportions when he transformed (as his alternate mode is also depicted as a Jeep in fiction), but in the second part of the story, Swindle is hit by a burning Jeep (possibly even the same one) that is now in scale with his robot mode. Ladies' Night It can even happen within the same issue without an artist change: In IDW's Spotlight: Soundwave, there's a scene where a human picks up Soundwave in his tape deck mode, which is smaller than a thick comic book slipcase in his hands. A few pages later, Laserbeak picks up Soundwave out of the human's hands, being barely able to hold the tape deck in his mouth, making Laserbeak about the size of a large dog (not counting the wings). Yet when Skywatch discovers Laserbeak at the end of the story, his head alone is suddenly the size of an adult human. Spotlight: Soundwave

Beast Megatron's size vs. Optimus Prime's in America... and Japan. Looks like the Blasty Zone adds on a few tons to Beast Era characters.

Between the Great War and the Beast Era, the majority of the Cybertronian race considerably downgraded in size at the Great Upgrade. When entering the Ark, the Beast Warriors are quite small compared to the dormant Generation 1 characters, especially Optimus Prime—but just how much bigger varies quite a bit from scene to scene and episode to episode. When interacting with the Autobot technology of the Ark and the Autobot shuttle, the Maximals are often dealing with equipment grossly oversized for them (standing on the chairs to reach the controls, turning knobs the size of their heads); yet the Ark also seems to feature some human-sized computer control panels. Master Blaster Without any height booster, Blackarachnia can interface well with these controls.

On the other hand, Robot Masters depicted Generation 1 and Beast Wars characters like Optimus Prime and Optimus Primal as being exactly the same size. Lovely. It's possible that passage through the Blasty Zone may somehow account for this discrepancy.

Explicit size changes

Numerous characters are explicitly shown to shrink or expand at various times.

Human-scaled alternate modes

Blaster becomes a human-scale radio; Megatron shrinks into a handgun scaled for either Transformer or human hands, depending on the situation. The cartoons and comics typically show this without explanation, leaving the audience to attribute it to advanced alien technology.

Pretenders

Some versions of the Pretenders are shown to explicitly shrink when hiding in their human-sized outer shells. In the U.S. toy commercials, Grimlock, Bumblebee, and Jazz in their new Pretender forms were small enough to fit in Powermaster Optimus Prime's hand. So, at least in that micro-continuity, they were human-sized or Powermaster Optimus Prime is the size of Devastator. Super-God Masterforce featured Pretenders who did not have outer shells but rather an ill-defined holistic transformation which explicitly involved size changing. A vaguely similar explanation appeared in Dreamwave's More Than Meets The Eye encyclopedia.

Implicit size changes

Characters often change size in a less explicit fashion when transforming. These changes in scale are usually attributed to size-changing by that portion of the fan base who like to find explanations for things. The other explanation is that the artists hoped the audience wouldn't notice. It can also be supposed that they are hiding their mass somewhere (car style Transformers storing mass in their passenger compartments when in humanoid form, Starscream folding his wings flat, the buildings in a city-bot collapsing to eliminate the spaces normally occupied by humans, boat-bots filling up or getting rid of the vast empty areas used to provide buoyancy) or puffing up with empty space, but at a certain point, things just get silly. Some Transformers are smaller than solid blocks of the mass contained in their alt modes: Unicron would have to be about as thick as the Earth's crust while in planetary form, and Optimus Prime would probably be blown away by a stiff breeze in his larger incarnations.

Transport characters

Definitely not toy-accurate.

...And not to mention this.

In the original cartoon, Transformers that act as transport for other Transformers, such as Astrotrain, Skyfire, and Cosmos, will often dramatically change size relative to their compatriots between one shot and the next. For example, Cosmos is much shorter than Blaster in robot form; yet Blaster easily fits within his spacecraft mode. Likewise, a whole squad of Decepticons can fit into Astrotrain's shuttle mode easily (including the combined-form Devastator!), yet he's an ordinary-sized trooper in his robot form.

Sometimes the cartoon would show ordinarily-scaled characters such as Cyclonus, Thrust or Huffer carrying another Transformer in their cockpit, implying either a tiny passenger or a huge vehicle. Even Omega Supreme, who is supposed to be huge, would have to have a greatly expanded scale for his rocket ship component to accommodate passengers as shown on the cartoon.

The Marvel comics commonly sidestepped this issue by not using Transformers as transport characters, or else requiring the passengers to transform into their explicitly smaller forms to be carried. Yet they were not immune to this problem. In one story, the Pretender Cloudburst exited his shell, transformed into jet mode, and then his shell (and Landmine) boarded him as a passenger. The fact that his outer shell was now much smaller than the inner robot was quietly ignored. Guess Who the Mecannibals Are Having for Dinner?

Dreamwave's More Than Meets The Eye series of bio comics tried to explain this for characters such as Astrotrain and Broadside by saying they're able to expand themselves to increase cargo space in vehicle mode, though their armor becomes thinner as it is spread out more. Conversely, the series notes, in robot mode, all that armor and structure being compressed into a smaller form makes that mode stronger and more durable for combat.

This concept is lampshaded in the credits of WFC, where Bumblebee pulls up, and the entire Autobot cast of the game step out of his passenger door, clown car style.

Combiner characters

Since when is a sedan nine stories tall?

Combiner characters are often depicted as far larger than the sum of their parts. Characters such as Devastator and Menasor are frequently shown as Godzilla-sized. Given that their limbs are mere cars and construction vehicles, this is patently absurd. (Superion, by contrast, would be building-sized, given that his torso is a 100-seat jetliner.)

Combiners are also often out-of-scale with other Transformers; a combiner with cars for legs and another car for its torso should be only twice as tall as a one-car Transformer, but they are routinely drawn as five to dozens of times taller than their comrades.

Sometimes, they are even out of scale in their own team; Bruticus's torso is an anti-aircraft truck, while one of his limbs is a Space Shuttle and another is a two-person offroad vehicle. For this to work, either Blast Off has to shrink, or Swindle needs to grow.

Scale problems and size-changing

Some fans interpret the many otherwise-unexplained scale issues above to all be the result of size changing, but this is debatable. If virtually all characters use mass-shifting (or whatever) to gain or drop a few feet of height for no logical reason, the technology would be pointlessly mundane. There's also no known reason for (e.g.) the Seekers to choose to get shorter when going into battle. A to-scale Starscream in robot mode could kick Bumblebee around like a soccer ball. There's simply no positive evidence that size-changing is so widespread.

Undersized alternate modes

Many Transformers are portrayed in fiction as having alternate modes that are smaller than the real-life objects they are imitating. Sometimes this is deliberate, allowing them to match their toy scale and/or be of a similar size to other characters; in other cases, it is essentially an artistic error.

Toys at the lowest price points usually include "mini" or "micro" in their name. Mini Vehicles Warpath, Seaspray, and Powerglide are usually depicted as smaller than other Transformers in fiction, even though their alternate modes should have them towering over other characters. This often results in minuscule vehicle forms; Seaspray is a tiny hovercraft, despite being covered with doors and windows. (Conversely, if a new toy based on such a character is designed to be more in scale with other toys, such as 2008 Universe Ultra Class Powerglide or 2010 Transformers Voyager Class Sea Spray, some fans complain because they expect those new toys to reflect the original toys' sizes and, by extension, the depiction in fiction.)

Do you have change for four hot rods?

The Micromasters are explicitly downsized Transformers, roughly the size of a human in the comics, meaning that they should have explicitly tiny vehicle modes... which wouldn't make for very convincing disguises. The Micromasters are about the same height in robot mode, but they transform into equally tiny cars, trucks, planes, tanks, and other vehicles that should be vastly different sizes.

Despite this, the Marvel comic featured Roadhandler carrying a human passenger in his vehicle form, as though he were a full-sized car. The Dreamwave miniseries Micromasters suggested that the Micromasters were scaled down to interact more easily with "smaller beings". Whether that meant creatures of human scale or even smaller stature is never clarified, but the Micromasters' passenger compartments are presumably too small to accommodate human passengers.

The Mini-Cons of the Unicron Trilogy are another race of small robots who stand approximately the same height as humans and, like the Micromasters before them, are clearly modeled to carry passengers. Really teeny passengers. (Notable exceptions are Grindor (in his original body), Sureshock, and High Wire, who become small one-man conveyances.) This results from the Mini-Cons scanning normal vehicles and then resizing them to fit, retaining now-useless passenger compartments. In the Cybertron cartoon, the Recon Mini-Con Team have slightly-larger-than-human robot modes, but their alternate modes are large enough for a single human passenger, implying either a little size-changing or that their cockpits are kinda cramped. Though the Recon Team all originate from Gigantion, and seeing how partnered Mini-Cons seem to change size to fit their larger companions, a little size shift to accommodate a passenger doesn't seem too far-fetched compared to other scale issues.

Likewise, the Beast Era Maximals and Predacons possess roughly human-size bodies; yet when portrayed as vehicles on Cybertron ("Dawn of Future's Past", the Vehicons in Beast Machines), they feature seats and cockpits that, at their size, should be basically useless.

Citybots

If you were ever this big in the cartoon, then we might call you a city.

See above. Way, way, way above.

A few characters have "city" alternate modes. As actual real-life cities can sprawl for many miles, a city-bot that can notionally house a population of humans, let alone Transformers, should have a robot-mode that'd make Godzilla look like a gecko. Suffice to say, almost no fiction even begins to approximate the logical size of a true "city-bot". In the American and Japanese cartoons, all four were shown as massive robots capable of housing many normal-sized Transformers. Even so, it would take something along the lines of the grossly undersized depictions of Unicron (see below) even to begin to represent reasonably the colossal size of a transformed city; so in the context of Transformers, "city" is perhaps better read as "building" or "fortress".

These city-bots often have "small" robots forming vital components. Scorponok has a "human-sized" being forming his head. Full-Tilt, Six-Gun, and Slammer must logically be building-sized in robot-mode to be in-scale with Trypticon and Metroplex, but, again, are not drawn as such.

The Marvel Generation 1 comic sidestepped this issue by depicting Trypticon, Fortress Maximus and Scorponok as merely "large-standard" characters. However, Metroplex, during his one, brief appearance, was depicted as being immensely larger, crushing Quintesson attack cruisers under foot without batting an eyelid. He was still considerably smaller than a city, however, but this was justified by him merely serving as the 'transformation core' for Autobot City: Earth, not the actual city itself.

Planets and planetbots

If we're generous and assume Cybertron is only the size of Earth's moon, then the larger visible buildings are roughly the size of Massachusetts stood on end, and you could wedge France into that gash. (Which would probably improve both Cybertron and France.)

Scale when it comes to planets is so fraught it's painful. The problems of describing citybots as "cities" is a thousand times worse if Unicron is supposed to have a planet alternate mode, and Cybertron is in turn supposed to be of similar size. Though different stories have compared Cybertron/Primus and Unicron to drastically different real planets, the fact remains that they are planets, and yet are shown in such insane scale to characters as to suggest they are the size of a very small moon (or space station).

To start with, Cybertron was shown throughout Generation 1 with buildings visible from space. Although this was intended to show that the planet was technological in nature, it makes little sense, as the structures would have to be the size of small nations to be visible. If the buildings were in fact supposed to be skyscrapers (or even 2000 A.D.-style arcologies) sized for 10 m (30') robots, Cybertron would still be less than 150km (100 miles) across. The rather Coruscant-like shots of Cybertron in Beast Machines may be less distinctive or "Cybertronian", but are far more believable. (Some people reason that the Transformers' advanced technology, along with their large size and their not needing to breathe, means that buildings actually CAN be that big.)

Unicron is a more extreme problem. Assuming no size changing occurs during his transformation (and really, what possible reason would he have to become smaller?), in robot mode he would be so massive that any shot featuring a recognizable part of his body, let alone the whole thing, would be on a scale such that no normal Transformer would even be visible.

Either Galvy is humungo, or Lithone is tiiinyyy!!!

Scenes in the 1986 movie in which he directly interacts with normal Cybertronians are blatantly absurd (though totally phat-looking). Shots such as the Dinobots fleeing his grasping hand, a starship penetrating his eye, impaling Brainstorm on his fingernail, On the Edge of Extinction! or especially him picking up Galvatron between his fingers before swallowing him, break any concept of "planetary" scale. Not to mention that he's described as a "ginormous weird-lookin' planet," which would lead one to assume that he is significantly larger than your average-sized weird-lookin' planet. Thank you, Jazz. Thank you so much.

If Cybertron is the size of Earth's moon (and that's generous), and Unicron is about the size of Cybertron, his hands would be about the size of Europe and Galvatron (to the right) would be about the size of Denmark.

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

The depiction of Unicron's scale in Armada was (debatably) a slight improvement, in that physical interaction with normal beings was not attempted. He preferred instead to communicate with normal Transformers by possessing one of them. Sideways Nevertheless, shots featuring Thrust and Megatron standing on his neck are still farcically out of scale.

As a side note, Unicron has been established in some continuities as having already devoured approximately 22.56% of known universes which is truly hilarious if one takes actual planetary/galactic scale into consideration. Assuming that Unicron is generously close to the size of our moon or the planet Mercury, when compared to other stellar bodies he begins to show up as an all but invisible speck. Imagine him trying to devour a star the size of Betelgeuse!

Oversized alternate modes

I'm tellin' ya, all da rats in Brooklyn are dis big!

Much less common are instances of a Transformer turning into an overscaled real-world object. Most such instances occur in the Beast Wars era.

Although the Beast Warriors are consistent day-to-day in their relative size to each other, their scale in relation to their real-world animal equivalents is more complex. While the bug characters such as Waspinator and Inferno are obviously scaled-up, other characters are more subtly not quite the right size.

Cheetor and Tigatron are shown standing next to real members of their species, and they are both the same size as the animals in question. Beast Wars (Part 1) Law of the Jungle This makes them (and Cheetor in particular, since he's around more) the measuring sticks for the other characters. Therefore, Rhinox is a rather small rhinoceros, and Optimus Primal is a roughly normal (or female) gorilla. However Rattrap is a monstrously huge rat, the size of a Labrador dog (indeed, the writers stated that Season 1 Rattrap was 5' (1.5 m) tall). Likewise Dinobot is considerably larger than a real velociraptor. Megatron, however, is a pitifully tiny specimen of a T. Rex. In their interactions with adult protohumans, the Transformer characters seem between twice and three times their height. Considering our ancestors really were smaller than modern humans, this is not extremely wrong, but it deserves noting.

However, thanks to the scaling up of the arthropod characters, it is relatively safe to assume that the Transformers scanned only animal forms and then rescaled them to fit their own size, which is actually slightly more believable than all other series, in which the Transformers use mass shifting to make their alt modes the right size.

Artistic license

Variation for characterization

With 20th Anniversary Prime and Smallest Transformers Bumblebee, you can actually recreate this scene.

Some scale problems are for the sake of characterization. For example, Optimus Prime is routinely shown as thoroughly gargantuan, several stories in height, and capable of cradling humans in his palm. If he's the size of a real truck, Prime in robot mode should be 8–10 m (25'–30') tall, at best. He's drawn large because he's a leader character.

Conversely, Bumblebee is sometimes shown only a few feet taller than an average human, while in reality he would be 3–5 m (10'–15') tall (the Marvel comic actually states he's 15' tall Plight of the Bumblebee!). He's drawn small because he's a human-friendly character, and a junior member of the Autobots.

With fighter jet alternate modes, the Seekers should be among the largest everyday Transformers and would tower over their Autobot adversaries; instead, the animation depicts characters such as Thundercracker and Wheeljack as about the same height. Though jets are much larger than cars, they're drawn the same height so the battles appear fair. (And also to make it easier to animate; blocking a shot where characters differ radically in height is difficult.)

In a related vein, sometimes Transformers are able to enter human buildings, fitting through their doors and running up their staircases without crashing through. B.O.T. A cast that couldn't enter buildings would be grossly inconvenient for telling some stories, so the animators fudge things.

Intentionally strange scale

One side makes you larger, one side makes you small. (Op's been noshing on the first side too much.)

Sometimes artists draw a character at a different size intentionally. For example, on the cover of the first issue of the original Transformers comics series, Optimus Prime is extremely huge compared to the highway, bridge, and normal cars. (Laserbeak is bigger than usual, too.) This is purely for dramatic effect.

Another notable example is the splash screen for the "World of the TRANSFORMERS" website, which depicts Optimus Primal (in his original gorilla body) as the same size as G1 Optimus Prime and Movie Optimus Prime, directly contradicting the size difference seen in "Optimal Situation" and elsewhere (except for Robot Masters).

Artwork for the Star Wars subline features humans from another galaxy standing at the same height as Transformers, although this is simply because most of the figures in the tabletop game advertised by this artwork are the same size.

Meet the Supreme class Munky Optimus Primal.

The live-action film series

Scale is absolutely not an issue in the movie. Riiight.

The creators of the live-action movie took great pains to avoid out-of-scale issues. (Well, greater than previous franchises.) This is sometimes reflected in the choice of vehicle or the design of their robot mode. E.g., Optimus Prime is an extended-hood cab in order to have more mass with which to make a taller robot mode. Starscream's robot mode is nearly as wide as it is tall, with shorter, digitigrade legs, so the massive jet-former won't end up twice as tall as Optimus. In the case of Blackout, his huge alternate mode simply results in a hulking, towering robot mode.

There are still minor scale issues to be found, though. For example, Optimus Prime can hold both Sam and Mikaela in one hand. Comparing this shot with when he picks up Archibald Witwicky's glasses a few minutes later, it seems the glasses have lenses a foot (30cm) in diameter. This is a visual cheat so the glasses are visible to the audience. There's also debate about whether Frenzy's head could compact itself into a slim mobile phone. The movie-franchise toys, meanwhile, are only intermittently consistent (particularly since some of the secondary ones are redecos of toys from previous lines), with the largest contrast among the "primary" toys being between Deluxe Class Arcee, a motorcycle, and Voyager Class Decepticons with helicopters as their alternate modes, such as Blackout and Incinerator. However, many of the wheeled vehicles are close to 1:35 scale, although Deluxe Class Jazz and Classic Camaro Bumblebee are obviously not the same scale, as noted above.

Devastator is another point of topic here. Whilst in the film, they worked on keeping his size relative to those of his components, in the game he was far larger. Also note that the alternate mode of Long Haul, who forms his right leg, is a massive Caterpillar 773B dump truck, which is considerably larger than a Caterpillar D9L bulldozer, the alternate mode of Rampage who turns into Devastator's left leg. The movie tries to circumvent the size differences between Devastator's individual components by adding more construction vehicles into the Devastator combination. The toy line, on the other hand, mostly ignores those additional components, resulting in massive scale discrepancies (see above).

Official scale guides

Official Scale Guides of The Transformers

Beast Wars Season 1 scale guide

Animators and comic book artists received official scale guides showing relative and (in some cases) absolute heights. Some of these were published in the character model guides The Ark and The Ark II. Though they were sometimes ignored, they still give insight into the official scale of characters in Generation 1. However, even here, there are problems. Devastator in the Season One scale guide was approximately 2.5 times the height of Optimus Prime, but by Season Two he was somewhat less than twice Prime's height.

Beast Wars likewise had an official scale guide, which appeared as a bonus on the DVD set of Season 2. Despite this guide, the series writers have indicated some measure of disregard for relative scale, when it suited the needs of dramatic tension. Thus, Optimal Optimus is ungodly tall in his first appearance, later reduced to perhaps two times the height of the rest of the cast.

ROTF scale guide

Revenge of the Fallen had scale guides featured in the 25 years of Transformers feature for the DVD release which showed official heights for both the Autobots and the Decepticons. Meaning Optimus Prime gains an extra twelve feet when he wears a corpse.

External links

• Estimated "real-life" heights for several Transformers, derived from the size of their alt-modes, archived from alt.toys.transformers on groups.google.com