You cheated me, Hasbro!

Something always bothered me about the GI Joe toy line.  According to Wikipedia, the 2.3 m (~7.5 ft) USS Flagg was the largest toy in the collection.  However, if you compare the relative size of the aircraft carrier to the F-14 Tomcat in the real life and toy versions, you’ll see something is radically different.  How large would the USS Flagg aircraft carrier be if made to scale?

GI Joe action figures measure 9.53 cm (~3+.75 in) tall.  If we assume a real soldier is 1.8 m (~6 ft) tall, then the human-to-toy scaling factor is 0.052.  A real aircraft carrier is about 332.85 meters (~1,092 feet) in length.  From this we can compute the scaled length of a toy aircraft carrier,

length = (scaling factor) · (actual length)

= (0.052) · (332.85 meters)

= 17 m (~57 ft).

The USS Flagg should have been eight times bigger!