What is the perfect minifig scale?

It's a question as old as minifigs. LEGO's cars, planes and other models are said to be minifig scale. But what scale is that, really? This gadget shows how a minifig compares to a 183cm (6 foot) person at different scales. At 1:44 the two are the same height. Six-wide trains are typically built at about 1:60 and 1:35 seems to be common amongst car and military builders.

So what scale should I use?

Minifig scale is actually a misnomer - you can either match a minifig by height or width, but not both. Tim's exercise in his original post is good to determine what you should use:

1. Go stand in front of the family car. Stick your arms out sideways and see how that compares to the bonnet width. Probably pretty similar if you're an adult with a small car. So the width of a car is about the width of your arms out. And a minifig is about 5-wide with its arms out.
2. Now, stand next to your car and see where it comes up to on your body. That's about where it should come up to on a minifig who is four brick heights and one plate high (around 5.5-wide in the vertical).
3. If you match one or both of these then the car you make will look about right next to a minifig. The same rule can be applied to other things.

That's a pretty good way to determine what scale you should use, but there is one caveat: the minifig got back like no other.

And to hone in on why minifig arse scale is crap, measure the width of your arse and then measure your arm span. The ratio is way less than 2 in 5 isn't it? The minifig's arse is a very crap scaling tool.

When it comes to minifigs, all carry a heavy load. See what I did there?

Read more

• Er0l has explored different vehicle scales: part 1 and part 2.
• Tom Alpin explores minifigs, minidolls, miniland, microfigs trophy figs and three plate figs in a comprehensive blog post.
• The flickr posts that started it all are found here. There's Part 1: minifig scale?, Part 2: the arse and Part 3: dynamic version.
• This tool is designed to give you a visual comparison. You'll get better precision if you use the scalers by Sariel or Dave Reid.

Credits

The gadget was originally created by Tim Gould after he examined minifig scale. Linus Bohman made improvements after that. Standing ovations!