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Frog - Flies Right Off The Ground

Although founded in 1932 it wasnt until 1955 that Frog started to produce plastic scale kits. They produced many different types and varieties up untill 1976 when the company came to an end. It would take an entire book to cover Frogs entire history and ranges so we will focus on some of the more intresting aspects that are not so well known. If you would like to read about Frogs history then we reccomend you read "Frog Model Aircraft 1932-76" by Leif Hellstrom & Richard Lines.

Frog kits in Hasegawa boxes?
It is a little known fact that there was a colaboration between Hasegawa and Frog between 1967 and 1974. The two companies swapped moulds and exchanged decals. For example the well known Frog Fairey Barracuda was also released by Hasegawa in 1968. Oftern the Hasegawa versions were very similar with the decals being almost exact copies, the kits Frog borrowed were quite different!

Novo - Where Frog went...
In 1976 Frog were made to sell their assests, the entire stock of moulds (bar a few missing ones) were shipped over to Russia, where they were produced (with far lower tolerances than the UK factories) in great numbers, shipped back to the UK and sold under the "Novo" brand. They started life in bagged form much like the early Frog kits and went on to be shipped in boxes (sadly with little glue). In 1980 Novos parent company went bust and they ceased to exsist.
They were never as good as the Frog kits but always a cheap replacement if you actually wanted to build the kit rather than just look at the box. Sadly, most of the moulds were in such poor conditions after being badly stored that the models were lost for good. The rest were re-aquired by various firms.

An actual war herritage
During the war Frog continued to help the war effort by stopping production of most of its toys and creating vast numbers of bakerlite recconision models for use in pilot and service personal training!

Letters for Dates?
During 1955 to 1963 all released Frog kits had the letter "P" in the product code. From 1964 onwards they had "F". Early Frog kits would of included a packing slip with the workers no. on it. That way if there was a missing part they could trace it back to the actual operator. A tube of glue was also included in many of the early kits (untill health & Safety came that is).

Almost....
Did you know that Frog were going to release a Sidley Nimrod, possibly in 1:72nd scale? Can you imagine what a model it would of been! It would of be given the code F237.

If you would like to bring back some memories why not browse the Frog kits we have in store, all checked to be complete! PLEASE CLICK ME!

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