FROG F159 Nort American Mitchell II bomber

Over the counter
reviews new Trade products
New Plastics

Also from the Frog stable come a Blackburn Skua, a N,A. Mitchell, and a Vickers Vimy, all to 1/72 scale and priced at 3s., 6s. and 6s. respectively. The Skua us a very welcome addition and another " first from Frog," only to them it is a " second," as it also featured in their pre-war range. Memory fades as to the accuracy of their first moulds, but their latest leaves a lot to be desired.

Redemption for Frog is embodied in their very fine modelling of the Mitchell II. Detail is adequate and neat, assembly easy, with good joints and transparent mouldings of the high standard which Frog always manage to achieve. Camouflage details and decals are for a Mitchell of No. 98 Squadron R.A.F., but I am quite sure many models will be finished in the multitude of alternatives.

Model Aircraft September 1964

AeroModeller SEPTEMBER 1964 Vol.XXIX No.344

PLASTICS REVIEW
By J. Goulding, A. Gee and Aeromodeller Staff

North American Mitchell Mark II by Frog at left and B.A.C One-eleven by Airfix below, are latest releases, each to excellent standard and inexpensive.

There is nothing particularly unusual to note about the B-25 Mitchell Mk. II price 6/- from Frog except that it fills a gap in the range of 1/72nd scale bombers. The wings are for some reason made to be removable with strengthened tongues and difficulty was found trying to fix the wings to the fuselage. The tongues, which were far too tight, had to be filed extensively before they would fit satisfactorily. Again, this is another tricycle undercart model that will not balance on all three wheels and, as in other cases, Frog make no mention in their instruction sheet of adding weight to the nose to hold the finished model down on its nose gear. Only when it is too late to do anything does it become clear that nose weight is essential All three undercart legs can be made to retract although no provision is made for closing u/c doors.

AeroModeller 1964-09

MODEL TALK
W. R. MATTHEWS
A MITCHELL FROM FROG

Frog's latest Second World War kit, the North American B-25D, or Mitchell II, is their best for some time. Apart from minor inaccuracies in the contours of the vertical tail surfaces which, we are told, will be corrected in later production batches of kits, accuracy of shape cannot be faulted, and the fit of the component parts is exceptionally good. The transfer sheet, providing the markings of No.98 Squadron, R.A.F., is also first class, but this is yet another kit that suffers from a "retractable" undercarriage with fixed doors. When will manufacturers learn that retractable undercarriages are quite pointless unless the doors move as well! Movable doors should present no insurmountable difficulties in a kit the size of Frog's Mitchell, and certainly no more than presented by the excellent moving rudders that are featured.

The colour scheme provided by the instruction sheet is accurate, but the colours as portrayed by the very crude box-lid illustration are most certainly not accurate. We believe that Frog plan to redesign their box-lids, and the sooner they do so the better for, at the present time, the lids give the potential purchaser of the kits a most unfortunate impression of the standard of the models to be found within the boxes.

RAF Flying Review September, 1964, Vol. XX, No. 1

MODEL ENTHUSIAST
This month's colour subject

The North American B-25 Mitchell, as one of the most popular of combat aircraft of WW II and possibly the best all-round light-to-medium bomber of the conflict, has understandably figured in the catalogues of the kit manufacturers virtually since plastics were first applied to this use. An efficient, docile warplane, possessing good handling characteristics, an excellent performance and amenability to adaptation for roles not envisaged at the time of its conception, the B-25, named after William Mitchell, the far-sighted US Army colonel of the 'twenties court-martial-led for his outspokenness and posthumously raised in rank to brigadier-general, was produced in larger numbers than any US twin-engined bomber before or since.

In all, about a dozen different kits of the Mitchell have been issued to a variety of scales, although current availability of many of these is a doubtful matter.

Also to l/72nd scale is a B-25D from Frog, and this is also a good kit but lacks provision for assembly in alternative versions. However, representing an earlier variant than offered by Airfix it complements that of the latter company.
F J HENDERSON

Air Enthusiast 1974-09 vol.07 no.09

Air Lines
Lines Bros., Inc., 1107 Broadway, New York, NY, USA.
Period: 1964-1966

The first U.S. distributor of Frog kits was H. Hudson Dobson in New York, who sold the pre-war Penguin kits. When plastic kits were re-introduced in the 1950s, distribution was handled by Lines Bros., Inc., and also by Continental Models, Inc., in Brooklyn, New York. Incidentally, Continental also handled most of the Airfix imports. However, all imports of plastic kits were subjected to high customs tariffs and sales were therefore relatively low. It was to cure this situation that Air Lines were born.

Air Lines was the brain-child of Alan Ginsburg, the local Lines Bros, manager. His suggestion was to have all the kits moulded in the U.S.A., thus avoiding the tariffs. He eventually persuaded the management in London that this was a sound proposition and an initial range of 24 kits was selected. After visiting a number of potential candidates -bringing a sample Frog mould in the car boot - an agreement was reached with Pyro in New Jersey to mould the kits.

Most Frog kits at the time had a line drawing rather than dramatic artwork on the box and this was felt to be unsuitable for the U.S. market. The artist Jo Kotula was therefore commissioned to paint new art for Air Lines, many of his paintings later being used on Frog kits as well.

All decals were printed in England and, apart from the new ones for the USAAF B-25 and B-26, the same as in the contemporary Frog issues.

Instead of the normal U.S. practice of adding the price after the kit number. Air Lines incorporated it in the number itself. Kit 3901 thus cost 39 cents, and so on.

It should be noted that the Vimy was never sold with radial engines, although shown thus in the Air Lines leaflet.

The first kits appeared in 1964 and a further five kits (7908, 9803, 9804, 12903 and 12904) were added in 1965. The last kits to be released were the 59 cent range in spring, 1966. However, by now it was apparent that the whole scheme was in fact uneconomic and Air Lines was terminated later in that year, an additional five kits planned for August never being produced.

Production quantities are not known but must have been substantial for most kits, judging by the numbers still around.

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

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?

The French production was a very large operation, only surpassed by the Soviet activities of recent years. Despite this, very little has been known about it, never mind published.

The origins can be traced back to the founding of EEC in 1958. Since Great Britain was not a member state at the time, the Lines Bros, management wanted to get a foothold on the continent by establishing a branch in France. It needed to be close to the Channel coast in order to make the shipping of moulds back-and-forth as easy as possible. However, no suitable existing factory could be found so in the end a completely new facility was built on the outskirts of Calais.

The general idea was to send moulds over from England and having the actual production taking place in France -an EEC member - thus making the products duty-free when exported to other EEC countries. The production did not only include kits - indeed, this only accounted for some ten per cent of the capacity - but general toys as well.

At first, all kits produced were sold under the Tri-ang label, mainly in order to conform with the other French products. But no doubt the word Frog was also considered less suitable due to certain associations in British-French relations...

No production records have survived, but it seems likely that most contemporary Frog kits were produced in Calais as well. The Tri-ang boxes, decals and instruction sheets were all copied from the British originals and only showed minor changes. Plastic colours could differ from the normal Frog ones however, some startling combinations like red Scimitars being produced.

Kit numbers were the same as those used in Britain. However, many of the kits can be found with a C-prefix to this (e.g. C.334P). This was also used on other Lines products manufactured in France and stood for Calais. It seems to have been used up to mid-1963 or so and then deleted from future boxes printed. Some kits can therefore be found both with and without the C-prefix. When IMA changed from a suffix-P to a F-prefix in 1964 the French followed suit for a short period. Kits already in production were not changed, however.

Early in 1964 Lines Bros, bought the Meccano group and - almost as a bonus - also got control of their French branch. Meccano was already a well-established name in France - much more so than Tri-ang - and the two companies were therefore quickly integrated, the Meccano name being worked into the Tri-ang brand name on most products. The existing Meccano manager became the new managing director for France. He had no objection to the name Frog - indeed, he thought it a good joke! - and their kit range was thus renamed Frog/Tri-ang.

A new box style and new artwork was adapted for new releases. For reasons unknown, these also reverted to the old suffix-P. Kits already in production were not changed, apart from getting a sticker indicating the colour series when appropriate (red for the Attacker etc.). There is no known example of an old kit being given a new box. The fact that the Britannia was released in this style is admittedly confusing, but probably only indicates that it was never issued in the early style for some reason.

It should be pointed out that Tri-ang did by no means handle all sales to the continent. Managers of the continental Lines Bros, selling branches did, of course, buy where the price was lowest and Tri-ang prices were often higher than those of IMA. Lines Bros. (Holland) NV did, for example, mainly buy British-made kits.

By 1966, kit production was becoming uneconomical and was consequently terminated before long. This was partly caused by poor sales and partly due to problems in planning the mould swapping programmes. In early 1967 some 50000 standard Frog boxes were sent over from Britain and most remaining Tri-ang stocks reboxed - in some cases this was done by simply putting a new box over the existing one. But for certain kits, such as the ships, airliners and small-scale WWII bombers, no new boxes were available and old stocks of these were still sold as Tri-ang in the early 1970s.

Although not yet positively proved, it is believed that the moulds for the Rapide, Rotodyne and small-scale Blenheim, Hampden and Wellington were left behind in France and eventually scrapped there.

Some special issues are also worth a mention. In 1968 an ex-Heller Mirage IIIC was released under the Frog/ Meccano-Tri-ang label and this was joined by another three ex-Heller kits in 1971. These are the only kits known to have used the Frog name without ever having been produced by either IMA or Rovex. For some reason, some of these kits were also sold as Meccano-Tri-ang kits as well, without reference to Frog. Possibly this was after the Airfix take-over.

In the early 1970s Meccano was bought by Airfix and it is an ironic fact that from 1982 the former Lines Bros, factory in Calais produced all Airfix kits intended for the European market...

It is possible, but not very likely, that the ex-Renwal AFV and ship kits sold as Frog in England were also sold as Tri-ang. Since they are not really ex-Frog kits, nor used the name Frog in France, they have been excluded from the list.
"Old" Style

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

AMT Frog
AMT Corp., 1225 East Maple, Troy, MI 48084, USA.
Period: 1967-1970

AMT was, and has continued to be, a company specialising in car and truck kits. By the mid-1960s, they had become interested in diversifying into aircraft kits as well, and were thus a natural new partner for Lines Bros, after the demise of Air Lines. AMT sold the kits under the AMT/Frog label and, apart from a batch supplied by Rovex in 1968, did all moulding themselves, using Frog moulds brought over from England.

The original plans called for some 40+ Frog kits to be released by AMT, but eventually only 23 different kits got produced. While having the moulds with them, AMT had several of them (P-47, FW 190 etc.) cleaned up by removing engraved markings and other heavy surface detailing. They also added a dorsal turret (but no guns) to the P-61 and reworked the Boston/Havoc kit.

At first all kits had kit numbers type 0000, but around 1968 this was changed to A-000 for both older releases and new items. Most artwork and decals were changed at the same time.

The agreement with AMT provided Lines with a large range of AMT cars for release in Europe under the Frog/ AMT label. However, these proved to be poor sellers and this caused the co-operation between the companies to be dissolved after a couple of years.

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

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

New kits from Airfix

For many years the kit market has supported the North American Mitchell; Monogram were early on the scene with a 1/70th-scale kit and they were followed by Revell. Recently Frog produced their 1/72nd-scale model and one would have felt that there was no need for further duplication. However, Airfix have now appeared with theirs and a very fine kit it is, too. To avoid repeating their rivals' models, Airfix have produced a kit which can be made into the B-25H or two different versions of the B-25J, this being accomplished by providing no fewer than three alternative noses to the fuselage.

The model is extremely detailed with a host of fuselage appointments and crew in "action" positions (both pilots appear to be reaching for the throttle levers), and by clever use of the bulkheads the bomb-doors can be made to open and shut although, as on the Buccaneer kit, one feels that to obtain realism rather than nattiness it would be better to cement them either closed or open. Finish is good and the transparencies show what Airfix can do when they try. The only comment one can make for improvement is that, as this version of the Mitchell was used fairly widely, other than U.S. insignia would have been welcome; a set of R.A.F. transfers would have been appreciated so that the Mitchell III could be made to stand alongside the Frog (or Revell or Monogram) Mitchell II, both of which saw action with the same squadrons of 2nd T.A.F.

Another recent release from Airfix is of a type which could well have been "popularised" before, for the Commonwealth Boomerang was an eye-catching, dumpy little fighter in the Far Eastern theatre. The standard of the kit again is high. The only difficulty your reviewer found was to obtain a satisfactory mating between the upper wings and the fuselage; this could not be done without a lot of hard work.

Transfers cater for two different R.A.A.F. squadrons, and a delightful and colourful Far Eastern fighter joins the more usual models on the shelf!—
J.D.R.R.

AIR PICTORIAL Vol. 27 No. 10 October 1965