FYI, it's not always simple polycounts that make or break a scene's usability. If a mesh is mostly quads (square/4-sided polys), or mostly tris (3-sided ones), it will load and behave a lot faster than a mesh that is riddled with nGons (an nGon is technically a polygon with 5 or more sides, but usually denotes a poly with a zillion sides to it). The Vickies are almost always clean in this regard, so I don't think it's that, but I wanted to bring it up anyway, just in case. :)

Your best bet I think is to look at the texture/shader rigging - a crap texture (or worse, a really crap shader) can suck down CPU and GPU cycles faster than a dachshund can eat raw meat.

Also, although you're using multiple V4/M4 figures, what kind of hair are they using? What kind of clothing? Those meshes may be sucking down the power as well.