Kambei wrote:
And we have also had Golden Compass and Harry Potter in more or less 1:18.
Not that I am complaining about the fact we are getting so many lines in this scale, but I am rather curious. For years, the industry standard seems to have been 1:12 scale, then all of a sudden, we are looking at a plethora of 1:18 figures. Are we looking at a severe rise in the cost of raw materials making 1:12 figures more expensive to make?
Sort of wondering about this big turn around myself. A few years back it looked like 1:18 as a toy scale was almost dead with GI Joe going to 8" and even Star Wars seemed to be experimenting to get away from 1:18.
Get to Toy Fair '08 and everyone seems to have either jumped on the band wagon or they have plans to jump on the band wagon in the near future.
Costs of materials could be one factor. Another factor could be the Wal-Mart factor of wanting to give less shelf space to toys so companies are shrinking the size of their figures and packaging to fit the needs of Wal-Mart. Could be the impulse buy price on toys have dropped as collectors are paying more for gas, food, and all the other stuff you need besides toys so cheaper toys mean more buys rather than I can't afford that this week. Could be the advancement in the sculpting on Star Wars and GI Joe showed other companies you can get the detailing of 1:12 at the much cheaper price point of 1:18. Could be other companies want to get in on the multi-packs and comic book packs band wagon and 1:18 is far better for that than the larger scales are.
What ever the reason it is pretty nice to see a new age of 1:18 dawning rather than wondering if 1:18 was going away.