If Monogram had went 1/25th...instead of 1/24...

[Southern Fried]

with their kits.

The subject matter that they had...they would have sold a zillion more.

[chunkypeanutbutter]

In theory. Maybe if all people who bought models build models as a hobby, and not just to try a couple times and leave like a lot of the market, or with kids who dump paint on em.

...or people who don't discriminate between 1/24 and 1/25.

[Nitro Neil]

The difference is scale never entered into my decision to buy a Monogram kit.

[Roadrunner]

A scale difference of such minor consequence, has never affected my decision to buy or build something.

[Bob Ellis]

1/24 is 1/2" = 1 ' . A common doll house scale

[JTalmage]

Never bothered me a bit. If I cant interchange a part, I make due.

[robertw]

Subject has always been more important to me then scale and when it comes to 1/24-1/24 the difference is clearly not worth worrying about.

[wayne swayze]

I was hooked on AMT kits in the beginning in 1/25 scale. Took me a while to discover Monogram 1/24, and I grew to really like it. But I will swap between scales if it works. What if AMT changed over to 1/24 scale? It will likely never happen. (BTW...would Group 25 change their name to Group 24?)

[mustang1989]

Dude, that aint a big enough difference to worry 'bout. I'll buy either scale and won't even think twice.

Edited April 30, 2015 by mustang1989

[Longbox55]

That theory really isn't valid. Tamiya, Fujimi, Hasegawa, Heller, Aoshima, and several other all use 1/24 scale and sell just fine. Realistically, 1/25 is the odd scale, compared to what the majority of kit manufacturers use worldwide.

[Lownslow]

some of you guys are starting to come off like Armor modellers, who cares about a scale inch

Edited April 30, 2015 by Lownslow

[sjordan2]

I've never quite understood the preference of some modelers for 1/25 vs 1/24, but the latter seems to be the general preference for car kit manufacturers and modelers in the rest of the world. To each his own.

[LDO]

Wow. Does anyone remember the Aoshima Barracuda thread? People acting like a 4% size difference* meant the end of the world.

*assuming all measurements are perfect.

[Chuck Most]

*assuming all measurements are perfect.

That's exactly my feeling. Who's to say a given kit is 100% true to scale in the first place? Given that and the minor difference between the two scales, and it's kind of a wash.

[James2]

I understand your comment and agree. I have rarely built any other scale than 1/25. But have cross scaled with 1/24 for a bash or two.

Edited April 30, 2015 by James2

[Zarana-X]

I prefer 1/24 anyway. I find old 1/25 Revell, AMT, and IMC kits to be some of the worst kits I've built.

[Foxer]

Everyone is correct that there is very little difference between 1/24 and 1/25. I started with the first AMT kits back in 1958 and have been 1/25 prejudice for a long time. Comparing a 1/25 Beetle to other 1/25 cars I had built convinced me I would not go to 1/24 when I got back into the hobby 20 years ago. I was building all the cars I had owned and wanted them all to look to scale with each other.

But, I DID build those 1/24 Bugs and have bought more 1/24 kits because they were the only ones offered that I "needed". I have found the scale doesn't really matter anymore to me .. better to have a model of the car than none at all. I have also been switching parts from the two scales back and forth with no apparent difference. Sometimes there is, but most of the time the scale difference is two small to matter.

Here's a perfect example of how the scale doesn't matter between 1/25 and 1/24 ... I'm building a 1/25 Revell '49 Mercury Wagon that I have mounted the body to the frame from a Monogram 1/24 Chevy pickup truck!!! It all fit like it was made to do this.

So this old man doesn't worry about these two scales anymore .. I'm a FREE man!

[Art Anderson]

It wasn't so much that Monogram chose, very early on, to do model car kits in 1/24 scale, but that model car kits weren't that company's sole focus. Monogram catered to just about every plastic modeling subject area almost from the get-go choosing to go with 1/48 scale aircraft by the early 60's when "box scale" kits began giving way to "constant scale" in the manner of British and European model companies. They soon got into the then popular 1/72 scale aircraft--going head to head with the likes of Airfix, Frog and Heller--not to mention the various overseas Revell affiliates in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Brazil and Japan.

AMT and JoHan, given their promotional model car business, went with the so-called "engineers' scale: 1/25. In addition, AMT Corporation quickly became THE leading producer of plastic model kits worldwide by the early 1960's, nearly all of that in model cars; their kits being widely distributed and wildly popular.

I've been told, several times over the years, that as the Japanese and European model companies got into model cars in a serious way, they looked to Monogram as the leader in precisely done model car kits--and since Monogram was doing their car kits primarily in 1/24 scale, they simply followed suit, climbed on that bandwagon. I've found this rather interesting, especially given that the rest of the World, beyond our shores lives by the metric system, and 1/25 scale would be so much easier to create with metric measure--1mm being oh-so-minutely close to one inch in 1/25 scale.

At any rate, Revell Monogram (run by the same team who'd been Monogram for years, took the plunge into 1/25 scale, with their 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz convertible, which if successful, would lead to all future model kits of regular production cars being tooled in this scale. The result, it was successful, and Revell-Monogram never looked back. They did, however elect to retain 1/24 scale for future race cars, though.

As for the scale difference--that makes no matter to me, the two scales are close enough in size that both fit into my building, and have for better than 50 years.

Art

[Dragline]

I didn't even realize there was any difference as a young man. As I got older I looked for cars and found that certain box size and assumed the car inside was the scale i wanted. 1/24 1/25 didn't matter.

Still doesn't.

[W-409]

If Monogram had went 1/25th instead of 1/24.....

...Nothing would be different. (Except the scale written on the box top).

I find no difference on those two scales as they're so close. I mix up parts from both scales and more important to me is that the parts look realistic. Some kits have way too small engines, for example, and they might not look good on the car they're supposed to go in and they might be too small on 1/25 scale car even if the engine was 1/24.

[ZTony8]

With the acknowledged fudging of shapes and sizes by the model companies how many kits are really the accurate scale(s)?

The 1/24th scale models are usually noticeably bigger than the 1/25 scale models-not by much but still noticeable.

I've sometimes wondered if the use of 1/25th scale pioneered by AMT didn't foretell a move to a wider usage of metric measurements in the U.S.A. in later years for other things.

Edited April 30, 2015 by ZTony8

[martinfan5]

with their kits.

The subject matter that they had...they would have sold a zillion more.

And you know this for a fact?, do have any proof to back this up ?

[GLMFAA1]

Way back when I got into modeling scale didn't matter like Aurora aircraft carriers being all the same size, but when it came to cars you knew immediately the difference when You saw the Monogram 55 Chevy and the AMT 57 Chevy.

Just for reference in size let's take a newer kit that has some length to it- The Mobius 53' trailer

53 feet = 636 inches

636 inches divided by 24 = 26.5 in scale length

636 inches divided by 25 = 25.44 in scale length

1.06 inch difference

greg

[gtx6970]

I know everyone says there's not much of a difference

But just as an example park a monogram 70 roadrunner next to a johan 1969 or amt 1968 ..and it becomes extremely obvious there's a difference

Call me a scale biggot. But I'll stick with all 1.25th scale

[Art Anderson]

And you know this for a fact?, do have any proof to back this up ?

Speaking from nearly 30 years in the retail hobby shop field, Monogram kits never did sell anything like the kits from AMT, MPC, even JoHan. Now, whether or not 1/24 scale made all that difference is something I couldn't really guage--but the old-line Monogram management team (which still headed up Revell Monogram for much of the 1990's apparently saw the wisdom of taking factory stock, even newly designed street rod subjects to 1/25 scale for all new releases after the '59 Cadillac Convertible.

Of course, Revell Monogram did stay with 1/24 scale for Nascar kits--I suspect recognizing that 1/24 was, with the first Monogram Nascar Cup Car kits in 1983 being as widely popular as they were simply made any switch to 1/25 scale most unadvisable.

Art