On Scaling

 Greetings friends and visitors, from Treesa.

I picked up this adorable, small plush manatee thinking that he might work well in doll scale. When I first bought him, I didn't have a clue how large a baby manatee was supposed to be, scale-wise. But thanks to the internet, I knew that I could figure it out. According to my online research, a newborn manatee calf is between 3 feet and 4 feet long at birth. (Like their land based 'cousins', elephants, manatees are large animals and their babies are born big.) This equates to 36 inches on the low end or 48 inches on the high end. To figure out how big a newborn manatee would be in doll scale, all I had to do was pick which scale to use and then do the math.

After seeing the real world measurements for newborn manatees, I was fairly sure that this plush would be too small to work with an 18 inch doll like American Girl. According to the label, this manatee plush is 7 inches long, though when I measured him myself to verify that, he actually seemed to measure up a little longer. Regardless, I started off my calculations using American Girl dolls as a reference point. American Girl, and similar 18 inch doll brands, are 1:3 scale. This means that something measuring 3 inches in our world should be 1 inch for them, although many mass-produced 18 inch doll accessories are notorious for being under-scaled. Anyway, a newborn manatee calf that's 36 inches long would be 12 inches in 1:3 scale, at the very least.

The next set of calculations that I did was for 16 inch dolls. This scale would include my Tonner doll, Tennille, and my Disney Store Singing Dolls. Dolls in this range are 1:4 scale, so a 36 inch newborn manatee would be 9 inches in their world. This measurement was closer to my target length, but still off scale-wise.

Finally we come to Barbie, and similar 11 1/2 inch fashion dolls. They are the primary focus of this blog anyway. Barbie dolls are 1:6 scale. Therefore, a 36 inch to 48 inch newborn manatee would be between 6 inches and 8 inches in Barbie scale. That's pretty much spot on with this plush.

So, here's Manny the manatee with Finnick, a Dreamtopia Rainbow Cove Merman. I thought that the name Finnick would work well for a merman, since he has a tail fin, or tail fluke? I'm not really sure of the terminology. Anyway, that'll wrap up this quick update post. I hope that all of you are doing well.

Signed, Treesa