>>23410992
1a. It's up to the individual director and mechanical designer how large they want their mobile suits, not Bandai.

1b. The miniaturized mobile suits thing was largely a Tomino concept for Late UC, but I'm not convinced that there wasn't also a Bandai ruse involved. Do you really think that it's a coincidence that 1/100 Late UC mobile suits are the same size as 1/144 Early UC mobile suits, right as the bubble burst in Japan?

2. Bandai tend to charge for plastic by size, the larger the kit the more expensive it is, despite the fact that this is plastic, which is the cheapest manufacturing material on the planet.

3. Up until the last fifteen years or so, it was nigh-impossible to actually build transforming Late UC mobile suits even at the 1/100 scale, and to date every single one of them is a hand grenade that's stupidly fragile. Even the modern 1/144 Late UC suits have to cheat the proportions and sizes to be feasibly manufactured for HG kits.

Another interesting factoid though: The Gundams in G and Wing are also very short, being only barely 1 meter taller than the Victory line. However, they're much simpler in design, especially transformation, which made it a lot easier to design kits for them.