Various scales of old Lindberg airplane models

Older Tamiya 1/35 kits were really about 1/32.

Not a surprise with the older kits. Some started life as box scale kits. I've done measurements on kits and found stuff out of scale every time I looked.  1/72 kits have features closer to 1/68 and others around 1/75 or 1/76.  I don't think their are any regulations, and there might be compromises for manufacturing.

seasick

Not a surprise with the older kits. Some started life as box scale kits. I've done measurements on kits and found stuff out of scale every time I looked.  1/72 kits have features closer to 1/68 and others around 1/75 or 1/76.  I don't think their are any regulations, and there might be compromises for manufacturing.

 

Indeed, box scale was around for decades, and some mfgs continue to re-release old box scale kits.  There was a decade or more of overlap where some mfgs started following specific scales while others still used box scales.

In model cars, there was the crazy conflict between 1:24 and 1:25 scale, that is still with us.

Aircraft kits followed what are known as architectural scales, where the denominator is factor of, or fraction of 12.  As a result, these scales can be referred to as such and such fraction of an inch scale, such as 1/4 inch to foot for 1:48 scale.  Use of architectural scales in modeling goes way back, before plastic models.

The 1/X inch to foot leads to arguments between RC guys and plastic guys. In RC, a 1/4 scale model is huge, actually being one quarter of size of real airplanes, while to a plastic modeler, 1/4 scale actually means 1/48 size of real aircraft.