Hi,
No, I can't do that since I am using objects that use physics (rigidbodies, etc). Also, they have to move whilst on the object (rotating, etc) so setting their position is not possible.
I found a solution which kind of works, bit ugly, but for my quick prototypes it works fine. I ended up making all the scaled objects (that I parent to) children of an empty gameobject that has default scale (rotation, i think, doesn't matter).
I also made sure that my Player gameobjects models, etc were all default (had to re-export all the models at the correct scale and orientation though). Bit of a pain but it kind of forces you to get everything clean instead of quickly hacking it with odd rotation, scale values.
Hope that helps someone with similar problems. Took me a few hours to figure it out
Mark