Micro Machines?

[talien]

Hi Guys,

What's the scale (in mm) for Micro Machines? Are they consistent between the little men and the vehicles?

What's the scale (in uh, fractions I guess) in comparison to vehicles?

Saw a lot of Micro Machines on sale on ebay and it got me thinking...

 

[frankthedm]

Saw a lot of Micro Machines on sale on ebay and it got me thinking...

You should not announce ebay items you want to buy.

IIRC, they don't look too out of scale for olde CARWARS. Kinda big for cars on Olde Battletech scale. Should be just right for the Collectible mini game battletech.

 

[talien]

There's 646 items under the search time "micro machines" on ebay. I figured merely calling them "Micro Machines" was safe, but thanks for the advice.

I'm more curious in terms of how the humanoid types stack up to 25mm figures. Especially some of the monster types.

I mean, if I were into Star Wars, there's so much variety it seems like you wouldn't even need Star Wars minis.

 

[phindar]

Micro Machines are about half the size of Hot Wheels or Matchbox cars. They're closest to N scale train scenery, although I've never really set them up side by side. 25mm is a little bigger than 1/72 scale figures (which are 1" figures, but tend to be much more realistically porportioned and so look a lot smaller). 1/72 scale stuff is a little bigger than HO Train scale, IIRC, and HO scale is a size or two up from N scale. (This is all from memory so I might be off on some of this, so buyer beware.)

Micro Machines = N Scale < HO Scale < 1/72 Scale < 25mm. More or less. Micro Machines probably work pretty well with 15mm stuff, but I have no practical experience with that.

When I played Shadowrun, we used modern 1/72 military figures and Micro Machines. The cars were a little undersized, but that actually worked better since they didn't suck up all the space on the battlemat. (We also used them with Marvel Supes, and they fit pretty well on the poster-sized battlemat.) Typically, its better for vehicles and buildings to be a scale under than the figures, just so they don't steal focus.

Now, Micro Machines figures are about 1/72 scale (they fit right in with the military figures), and they made a bunch of Star Wars themed ones, so if you're going to be using SW Micro Machines, it might be worth to look for those too. I remember they made X-Wing Pilots, TIE Pilots, two types of Imperial Officers (black uniforms and grey uniforms), Jawas, Ewoks, and the characters from the original trilogy. And then a bunch of sets from the prequels, because I find the occasional gungan in my minis box. They're maybe a head shorter than the SW Minis line, and so would make good mooks. (I still use my Jawas a lot in D&D. Who doesn't need 20 Tiny cloaked figures with yellow eyes?)

 

[Dragon Snack]

The SW Micro Machines are small compared to 25mm figs. They are probably closer in scale to 15mm. Not sure if all Micro Machines were the same scale, I know the scale of their vehicles varied in size.

That said, they would probably be fine for small characters/monsters (my MM Gamorean Guard is about the size of a DDM Kobold). Their bases are shorter though, which will exaggerate the scale difference.

(edit: phindar beat me to it, since I ran downstairs to compare them side by side in the flesh/plastic)

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Now, Micro Machines figures are about 1/72 scale (they fit right in with the military figures), and they made a bunch of Star Wars themed ones, so if you're going to be using SW Micro Machines, it might be worth to look for those too. I remember they made X-Wing Pilots, TIE Pilots, two types of Imperial Officers (black uniforms and grey uniforms), Jawas, Ewoks, and the characters from the original trilogy. And then a bunch of sets from the prequels, because I find the occasional gungan in my minis box. They're maybe a head shorter than the SW Minis line, and so would make good mooks. (I still use my Jawas a lot in D&D. Who doesn't need 20 Tiny cloaked figures with yellow eyes?)

They also made a set of droids, although some of them are out of scale with the rest of the figure line. As you can see in the picture below, R5-D4 is as tall as (if not taller than) IG-88 and 4-LOM. And the Mouse Droid, which is about 10-12 inches tall in the movies, is half the height of the other figures next to him in the packaging.

 

[Pbartender]

About 10 years ago, I picked a whole load of the SW MM figures in a Toys R Us discount bin... They were somthing like $1.50 a pack in the bin.

As others have said, they're a slightly smaller scale the the typical D&D mini, but... I've never had a problem with it, since SW and many other Sci-fi systems use metric measurements, instead of standard. When you line them up, the figures are just about the right size for 1 inch = 2 meter (6' 6") squares, which what D20 Star Wars uses for scaling.

Here's some insteresting notes I dug up a while back during a debate on the viability of pre-painted plastic minis...

In the mid 1990's, with the re-release of the Star Wars original trilogy, Galoob began producing a line of Star Wars Micro Machine toys. These included an "Action Fleet" line of plastic starship models, and a "figure collection" of non-posable painted plastic figures much like the current DDM figures, but using a much smaller scale.

These figures were sold by Galoob from as early as the summer of 1994, until at least 1999, if not later, with the release of Episode I and its related toys.

The character packs typically included nine painted plastic miniatures in four different poses, and sold for about $10 a pack.

On top of this, Galoob was bought out by Hasbro in 1998. Which means at least a part of these figures were built and distibuted under Hasbro's watch.

Now, granted, these minis appealled to the entire Star Wars fandom, but at the same time required the extra licencing fees from Lucas. But... from 1991 until 1999 there was also a Military line of Micro Machines with similarly sized and painted soldier figurines. Those figures were far more generic than the Star Wars figures, and had a much longer run.

Poke through some of those links... There's lists and photos of all the figures that were made, though I don't think any of them are currently in production and some can be tricky to find.