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A NOSTALGIC TRIBUTE TO FROG MODEL KITS


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resized_f79d5c81-45ca-4905-88ed-2da7e6d2

 

My NOVO Lysander which I bought from the Tip Top shop in Scarborough back in 1978.

 

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But should I build it .............. I have some gloss varnish

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Great to see this thread still continuing! I had a lot of fun building this Wildcat, as an F4F-3 with Battle of the Coral Sea markings. I was inspired by the finding of the wreck of the USS Lexington. (Now I'm wondering what happened to the tail decals on this build and why I didn't see it at the time!!)

 

9otKwRg.jpg

Edited by Ventora3300
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4 hours ago, adey m said:

And as KevinK has said I too remember buying a pack of FROG decals for about 50p which were being advertised at the time in model magazines. I think I still have some in my decals collection. FROG decals from the late 1960s and 1970s were excellent quality and are still useable today, 40 years later.

Ah! the memories of sending off a postal order to FROG for a pack of their transfers (I never called them decals back then) 50p was a lot in those days, 10/- pre-decimal, (June 71) I cannot recall how much I paid for them.  It was also the only source of swastikas for German WW2 aircraft, I remember being very disappointed when they removed those from the sheets.

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9 hours ago, Ventora3300 said:

And I did eventually get the 'ex-Frog but boxed by Revell' He115 built to compare with the Matchbox version.

 

Fantastic to see the FROG Heinkel 115 built up as FROG intended, and well presented too. I built the Matchbox Heinkel 115 when it first came out back in 1975 and even then I was disappointed with it, it was very clunky and covered in ditches that the crew could take cover in, only had two cockpits under the greenhouse and the nose seemed very long and pointy.

 

I prefer the overall character of the FROG one, except for the engine cowlings where I prefer the Matchbox one.

 

thanks for posting your wonderful selection of FROG models Ventora

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10 hours ago, Ventora3300 said:

And I did eventually get the 'ex-Frog but boxed by Revell' He115 built to compare with the Matchbox version.

 

 

 

2xumKid.jpg

Those look really nice, all your Frog stuff is very well done. I'm a bit perturbed at this photo though, is it the photo angle that is doing it or does the Frog 115 lack a bit of depth to the fore & aft dimension compared to the Matchbox one & if so, which one is correct? A variant difference or a mistake, I've a Frog/Revell one in stock.

I did some more googling & found this site, as well as your original build, it appears to me, depending on the accuracy of the drawing he used, the Frog/Revell kit may be slightly shorter in the cockpit which in turn has influenced the length of the wing at the wing roots, Without a MB kit alongside it, I'm sure it'll look just fine, as does yours. :)

Steve.

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resized_d70e997e-6e1a-4ffb-ad3a-97017932

 

A selection of my FROG transfers, some of which date back to the 1970s. As we have talked about already FROG transfers were available to buy in bundles after the company folded up in the mid 1970s, but they were also still widely available to pick up at model shows in the 1990s where I acquired a lot of mine.

 

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Two different transfer sheet layouts for the Tupolev SB-2.

 

 

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resized_d5e89db7-2bad-415b-affc-0c60d351

 

Okay, I am going to call them transfers from now on  .............  or should that be transfers !

Edited by adey m
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On 2/15/2021 at 9:26 PM, adey m said:

resized_d70e997e-6e1a-4ffb-ad3a-97017932

 

A selection of my FROG transfers, some of which date back to the 1970s. As we have talked about already FROG transfers were available to buy in bundles after the company folded up in the mid 1970s, but they were also still widely available to pick up at model shows in the 1990s where I acquired a lot of mine.

 

resized_c403ed5f-3857-458d-9b83-61a26b3d

 

Two different transfer sheet layouts for the Tupolev SB-2.

 

 

I bought a bundle of these transfers back in the early eighties and still have them, some of them look really well printed, and probably still useable 

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On 2/15/2021 at 8:04 AM, adey m said:

And as KevinK has said I too remember buying a pack of FROG decals for about 50p which were being advertised at the time in model magazines. I think I still have some in my decals collection. FROG decals from the late 1960s and 1970s were excellent quality and are still useable today, 40 years later.

I confirm, I still have some of original Frog decals and use them when I need some...

I never was successful with use of Novo one. BTW - the blue-box kits were Novoexport, for inner market Novo kits were put into a very poor quality boxes

Regards

J-W

 

 

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On 16/02/2021 at 19:54, adey m said:

resized_d5e89db7-2bad-415b-affc-0c60d351

 

Okay, I am going to call them transfers from now on  .............  or should that be transfers !

 

I still call them transfers. 

 

I recall when I was young and was bought an American Revell model I thought "decals" in the instructions  sounded weird but now alas it is like all the other American words/spellings that have been assimilated here over time. 

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On 2/17/2021 at 2:20 PM, JWM said:

I confirm, I still have some of original Frog decals and use them when I need some...

I never was successful with use of Novo one. BTW - the blue-box kits were Novoexport, for inner market Novo kits were put into a very poor quality boxes

Regards

J-W

 

 

They are still in my stash too. I used some the other day and they worked no hitch at all. Best 50p or £1 (whatever it was) that I spent!

 

Trevor

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27 minutes ago, JOCKNEY said:

You have nothing to fear using any of your Frog decals, they work better than many of the current one being provided with new kits.

 

Heres my recently completed Frog Avenger, decals worked perfectly 

 

IMG_4929

 

Lovely Avenger Pat. 

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On 2/14/2021 at 2:46 PM, KevinK said:

There was a reason for Woolworth's only doing Airfix: there was an exclusive contract in place from the late '50s onward, under which Woolworth's had each new Airfix kit before other shops and Woolworth's sold only Airfix kits. Frog was in the corner shops, department stores, cycle shops, toy shops and of course, model shops.

I've also read that Woolworth's funded some early Airfix kits in exchange for those exclusive rights.

 

When I was a kid I was home sick from school for a few days with chicken pox and very bored with nothing to do. I had read every book in the house, so I asked my dad to buy me some aviation magazines and bring them to me when he came home from work so I would have something to read. He did, and among them was a magazine I had never heard of, much less seen before: R.A.F. Flying Review. Wow! What an eye-opener! Not only did it have photos and stories of aircraft I had never heard of (Jet Provost, Gannett, Blackburn N.A.39, Fairey Rotodyne), but also advertisements for products I had never heard of (like three-wheel autos – how quaint!), including constant-scale model kits from companies such as Airfix, Frog, and Eagle. How cool! These were the models for me! According to the Airfix ad, their kits were available at the local Woolworth's. But this was in Freeport, Texas, a small town on the Gulf coast, October 1958, and there was no Woolworth's, although there was a Neisner's. I still wonder why the local newsstand there was selling R.A.F. Flying Review. The only explanation I can think of is that Freeport had a small deep-water harbor, and the occasional British freighter came into port. I know we gave a lift one day to a couple of just-arrived British seamen who needed a ride to town. Maybe the newsstand owner was a British ex-pat.

 

The next year (1959), on our annual summer vacation, my mom, dad, sister, and I went to visit relatives and Disneyland in California, driving all the way there and back in the days before Interstate highways (motorways); there is absolutely no truth to the rumor that National Lampoon's Vacation was based on that trip, although it possibly could have been! In a store on Disneyland's Main Street I discovered shelves piled high with Frog kits. I was in heaven! But I wound up with a Revell F-27 because my aunt, who accompanied us to Disneyland that day, offered to buy me a model, and thought the F-27 was better because it was "American."

 

In 1961 we moved to Wichita Falls, Texas, and I learned there was a Woolworth's downtown. As soon as I possibly could, I persuaded my mother to take me shopping so I could visit the local Woolworth's in search of those Airfix kits I had seen in R.A.F. Flying Review. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that not only were there no Airfix kits at the local Woolworth's, but that the Woolworth's employees had never heard of them, in spite of my showing them the magazine ad! I was not happy. It was suggested that I contact the US headquarters of Woolworth's for an explanation. When I got back home, I wrote a letter to the address provided by the store manager, and in a few days I had a response, in the form of an official-looking letter, signed by a Woolworth's vice-president, informing me that, yes, Woolworth's in Great Britain was part of the same company as the US stores, but sold different products to their customers. As a consolation, a $5 gift certificate was included, which I used to buy Revell, Monogram, and Hawk kits.

 

But, in a small, out-of-the-way hobby shop there, I found stacks of Frog kits! (Why would a hobby shop in North Texas have Frog kits? No idea, even today.) I bought and built the Hunter, Meteor, Fairey Delta, and Short Sealand, and they formed the nucleus of a 1/72 scale kit collection which gradually grew over the years to include Airfix, of course, and Revell's 1/72 releases. The first Airfix kits I remember building were the Jet Provost, Auster Antarctic, and Saunders Roe S.R. 53. The neat thing about building "foreign" kits, besides their exotic nature, was the fact that none of my boyhood friends had ever heard of the aircraft they depicted, so I could impress them with my "foreign intelligence." They were all building purple, yellow, and red Aurora 'Famous Fighters'!

 

A year later I met a high school classmate interested in ships, and he and and I became best friends. We mail-ordered (from a UK vendor advertising in R.A.F. Flying Review; Arthur Mullet Ltd., if memory serves.) some Airfix kits, some of the Eagle 1/1200 ship kits, and some Humbrol enamels with which to paint our model ships and planes, and fought many a horrific naval battle on the floors of our rooms. That was also my first experience dealing with International Money Orders. I still have a few of those Humbrol tins, and the paint is as good today as it was back then!

 

Over the years I probably purchased at least one example of every Airfix and Frog plastic kit ever made,and more copies of R.A.F. Flying Review and its successors. They are mostly gone now, but that chance encounter with a copy of an obscure (to me, at least) British magazine sparked an interest in British aviation and model kits that has remained with me to this day.

Edited by Space Ranger
Minor corrections
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12 hours ago, Space Ranger said:

I've also read that Woolworth's funded some early Airfix kits in exchange for those exclusive rights.

 

When I was a kid I was home sick from school for a few days with chicken pox and very bored with nothing to do. I had read every book in the house, so I asked my dad to buy me some aviation magazines and bring them to me when he came home from work so I would have something to read. He did, and among them was a magazine I had never heard of, much less seen before: R.A.F. Flying Review. Wow! What an eye-opener! Not only did it have photos and stories of aircraft I had never heard of (Jet Provost, Gannett, Blackburn N.A.39, Fairey Rotodyne), but also advertisements for products I had never heard of (like three-wheel autos – how quaint!), including constant-scale model kits from companies such as Airfix, Frog, and Eagle. How cool! These were the models for me! According to the Airfix ad, their kits were available at the local Woolworth's. But this was in Freeport, Texas, a small town on the Gulf coast, October 1958, and there was no Woolworth's, although there was a Neisner's. I still wonder why the local newsstand there was selling R.A.F. Flying Review. The only explanation I can think of is that Freeport had a small deep-water harbor, and the occasional British freighter came into port. I know we gave a lift one day to a couple of just-arrived British seamen who needed a ride to town. Maybe the newsstand owner was a British ex-pat.

 

The next year (1959), on our annual summer vacation, my mom, dad, sister, and I went to visit relatives and Disneyland in California, driving all the way there and back in the days before Interstate highways (motorways); there is absolutely no truth to the rumor that National Lampoon's Vacation was based on that trip, although it possibly could have been! In a store on Disneyland's Main Street I discovered shelves piled high with Frog kits. I was in heaven! But I wound up with a Revell F-27 because my aunt, who accompanied us to Disneyland that day, offered to buy me a model, and thought the F-27 was better because it was "American."

 

The next year (1960), we moved to Wichita Falls, Texas, and I learned there was a Woolworth's downtown. As soon as I possibly could, I persuaded my mother to take me shopping so I could visit the local Woolworth's in search of those Airfix kits I had seen in R.A.F. Flying Review. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that not only were there no Airfix kits at the local Woolworth's, but that the Woolworth's employees had never heard of them, in spite of my showing them the magazine ad! I was not happy. It was suggested that I contact the US headquarters of Woolworth's for an explanation. When I got back home, I wrote a letter to the address provided by the store manager, and in a few days I had a response, in the form of an official-looking letter, signed by a Woolworth's vice-president, informing me that, yes, Woolworth's in Great Britain was part of the same company as the US stores, but sold different products to their customers. As a consolation, a $5 gift certificate was included, which I used to buy Revell, Monogram, and Hawk kits.

 

But, in a small, out-of-the-way hobby shop there, I found stacks of Frog kits! (Why would a hobby shop in North Texas have Frog kits? No idea, even today.) I bought and built the Hunter, Meteor, Fairey Delta, and Short Sealand, and they formed the nucleus of a 1/72 scale kit collection which gradually grew over the years to include Airfix, of course, and Revell's 1/72 releases. The first Airfix kits I remember building were the Jet Provost, Auster Antarctic, and Saunders Roe S.R. 53. The neat thing about building "foreign" kits, besides their exotic nature, was the fact that none of my boyhood friends had ever heard of the aircraft they depicted, so I could impress them with my "foreign intelligence." They were all building purple, yellow, and red Aurora 'Famous Fighters'!

 

Later, I met a schoolmate interested in ships, and he and and I became best friends. We mail-ordered (from a UK vendor advertising in R.A.F. Flying Review; Arthur Mullet Ltd., if memory serves. ) some of the Eagle 1/1200 ship kits and some Humbrol enamels with which to paint our model ships and planes, and fought many a horrific naval battle on the floors of our rooms. That was also my first experience dealing with International Money Orders.

 

Over the years I probably purchased at least one example of every Airfix and Frog plastic kit ever made,and more copies of R.A.F. Flying Review and its successors. They are mostly gone now, but that chance encounter with a copy of an obscure (to me, at least) British magazine sparked an interest in British aviation and model kits that has remained with me to this day.

 

Your mention of the 1958 RAF flying review struck a chord with me as I recently posted some ads from the September issue.

 

In case you missed them I have repeated them below.

 

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