The BOAC Comet 4C Jet Airliner

Tri-ang/Frog (France)
Lines Freres S.A., Route de Dunkerque, Calais, France (to mid-1964);
Meccano - Tri-ang Lines Freres S.A., 70-88 Avenue Henri Barbusse. 93 Bobigny. France (from mid-1964)
Period: 1962?-1972?

FROG model aircraft 1932-1976, R. Lines, L. Hellstrom

Unknown no. 1
Period: 1964

The 1964 production records contain a reference to a "356 Special In Poly Bag" produced in 800 pieces. This does in al probability refer to some special batch supplied to a customer who wanted to use the kits for promotional purposes. The logical choice would be an airline, but which one? At the time, a number of airlines were in the process of acquiring Comets and perhaps one of these wanted some kits as give-aways. If so, they may perhaps have included new decals.

Another theory is that the entry was a misprint for 351 instead of 356. If so, it might refer to the Martinair issue of the DC-7 (which see).

FROG model aircraft 1932-1976, R. Lines, L. Hellstrom

FROG F356 The BOAC Comet 4C Jet Airliner, Model Aircraft International, 1964-66

W30 Comet 4 jet transport or trooper, 1968-70

NOVO F356 Comet 4C Jet Airliner, Cat.No.76096, NOVO Toys Ltd, 1977-1980

The NOVO kit Cat.No.76096 Comet 4C Jet Airliner was included in the first catalogue of the newly established company. After the tooling was handed over to the USSR, its mould was sent to the Tashigushka Trust factory in Tashkent along with other 1/96 airliner models and its ruthless exploitation was started. This was the price of the deal with the British side.

In order not to waste the country's precious currency, Nikolai Semenovich Patolichev, Minister of Foreign Trade of the USSR gave preference to compensation deals in contracts with Western countries, under which the USSR paid for the provided technology and equipment with manufactured products. A similar deal was struck with the company whose property was the FROG moulds.

There is no doubt that this was a win-win deal. But the harsh conditions and the low prices for incoming kits from the USSR required ruthless exploitation of the tooling provided. In just two years of existence, 160,000 Comet 4C kits were donated to NOVO Toys Ltd (compared to 40,000 produced in Britain in fifteen years!!!).

Ташкентская Комета 1/96

By 1980, when Britain joined the American sanctions against the USSR due to the introduction of a limited contingent of Soviet troops in Afghanistan and NOVO Toys Ltd was urgently terminated, probably the tooling on the kit was thoroughly worn out. The quality of the mouldings of the cheaper polystyrene for the Soviet domestic market had declined dramatically. Nevertheless, the kit continued to be sold in the USSR, although each year the kit's parts looked worse and worse.

Probably by the mid-80s the kit was already off the market, and by the 90s it had become an expensive rarity. Now the prices of the Tashkent kits without any decals and boxes on "Avito" or "MeshOK" auctions can exceed the average UK price on an eBay auction for an original NOVO kit by several times.