@onlyonepinman – I never said that everything is a ‘conspiracy theory’, scale creep certainly isn’t, it’s an easily observable fact, and it started before the advent of plastic kits.

I got into miniature wargaming very early – about age 6 or 7 – with Airfix, Elastolin and various ‘dime store’ type figures and back then, the by far most popular scales were 20mm (such as Airfix 1/72 plastics, made in that size originally to go with model railroading) and 25mm (such as Minifigs, Ral Partha, Grenadier, the big names at the time), the scale most often used by ‘serious’ wargamers.

If memory serves, ‘heroic 25mm’ (read: 28mm) came along in the late 70s or early 80s, the first instance of scale creep I was aware of, and they were still all metal.

While we’re on the subject, I dug out some old figures and measured them. I have 2 Citadel Chaos Warriors (metal) from the mid-80s, one of them measures 24.5 mm from the sole of his foots to the top of his noggin, the other 25mm. They are not standing ramrod straight at attention, their knees are slightly bent and they’re slouching a,ittle, let’s allow another 2-3 mm for that lack of good posture, which gives us around 27-28mm for both figures.

Heroic 25s’, if you will.

I also stood my Bretonnian Grail Knight Hero on foot (GW ’97) next to his contemporary plastic Archer (from the basic 5th edition boxed set) and, not counting his very elaborate headgear, he does not ‘tower over ‘ the Archer, they would be the same height if Mr. Hero was helmetless.