Airfix Products Ltd.

I promised when I joined to do an Airfix page...here it is!



There are plenty of histories of Airfix around so I won't bore you with one of those, but suffice to say, when they first moved from general household good into toys, they were pirates, copying from European flats and an American company called Beton (BErgaN TOy CompaNy). The mounted figure they copied included several fox-hunting figures, and while there was never a fox (to my knowledge) they did add two beagle poses at some point. The beagles were then joined with other breeds and sold with a little garden-kennel.

There's more on the range on my blog here;

Bergen / Beton, Airfix et. al.

Beautyful doggies
Especially the two hounds have wonderful poses  

I never heard about Airfix before, so you surely wont bore ME with more info about the brand    

Once they had started their - now famous - range of approximately 1:76th scale figure sets, they quickly realised that model railway enthusiasts were a major potential customer base (indeed the first set of these figures was issued as part of the model rail range, several years before the numbered sets started to appear, and it then didn't join the figure range for some time after), set 4, was the farm set;



I have covered these on my blog, and they can be found here;

Airfix Farm

The cream coloured ones are quite hard to locate being a late, small-run issue, and they were also sold as premiums, sellotaped to cartons of Dairylea cheese spread, in a little box.

The next sets to interest this forums members were sets 24 and 25, which were Zoo animals Set 1 and Zoo Animals Set 2 respectively.

All sets were labelled HO-OO, for several decades, this is - of course - a meaningless term, as it refers to a model railway gauge! But it helped sell product to people modelling or war gaming in 1:90, 1:87, 1:76, 1:72 and the US 'HO'; 1:64th scale.



Contents of Set 1 with the full set, close-ups of one of each and the set still on the 'sprue' - actually the 'runners', the sprue is the cone-shaped piece attached to the injector-head which is usually removed in the factory.



Similar treatment of set two.



This brings like animals together from the two sets, and compares adults with babies, basically a pantograph-down in size, but with the deer/antelope, the horns were also removed, while the elephant is a proper baby sculpt, although looking a little 'Asian' for what is clearly an African adult!

I have put these on the blog, but I haven't got round to adding text yet!

Zoo Animals - Set 1
Zoo Animals - Set 2

Finally - in the 'HO-OO' series came a TV tie-in with the Tarzan franchise and while it only contained a few animals and they were mostly mould cavities from the previous zoo sets, there were several new sculpts.



The new poses were a leaping Lion, a chimpanzee (the Cheeta character) an actual cheetah and a new crocodile sculpt. HaT Industries reissued it a while ago in new colours.

Again they are also on my blog;

Tarzan Set

Again, I still haven't got round to adding text yet! I also just got a 503 alert, but it IS there, so persevere!

That are things that i really like. More informations about animal figurines that i dont know!! Many thanks fro sharing, that are very nice figurines- i especially like the antelope        

SUSANNE wrote:

Beautyful doggies
Especially the two hounds have wonderful poses  

I never heard about Airfix before, so you surely wont bore ME with more info about the brand    

Most of it is about hair-combs and plastic kits...I suspect people here just want to look at the animals!

widukind wrote:

That are things that i really like. More informations about animal figurines that i dont know!! Many thanks fro sharing, that are very nice figurines- i especially like the antelope        

I will track down the rest of the 54mm dogs - over time! There are two horse poses in 1:32 scale and lots of horses in 1:76 with various cavalry sets or pulling limbers, wagons or chariots, and two small dogs, one in the NATO ground-crew set and the other with a missile kit, I will try to post them at some point, along with the zoo play-set.

On the kit front there are again horses in various scales with riders including a jumper (considered to be Princess Anne!), a small range of Birds and some larger dinosaurs.

This is the 1975 catalogue image of the Zoo play-set, which was supplied to me by Kostas, a Greek follower of my blog.

Very very interesting! I like the crazy poses of some of them Llama, elephant and giraffe look like in some kind of dance

i LOVE these old Zoo-enclosures!

Very interesting, I've been tempted by the Airfix sets from time to time but haven't gotten any. They are quite small.

The Airfix boxes were very common in France in my youth, I used to play with them. Thank you for sharing this interesting topic   

Thankyou for all the info !!!   

They are beautyful and very interesting   

SUSANNE wrote:

Thankyou for all the info !!!   

They are beautyful and very interesting   

Susanne

An excellent book on Airfix’s history is “The Boy’s Book of Airfix”:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Boys-Book-Airfix-Arthur-Ward/dp/0091928982/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=11ACBRWP41XDHDGW7739

Also available in a book shop.   

Airfix also produced "Beta-Builder” a construction toy inspired by Lego!

smallscaleworld wrote:

Once they had started their - now famous - range of approximately 1:76th scale figure sets, they quickly realised that model railway enthusiasts were a major potential customer base (indeed the first set of these figures was issued as part of the model rail range, several years before the numbered sets started to appear, and it then didn't join the figure range for some time after), set 4, was the farm set;



I have covered these on my blog, and they can be found here;

Airfix Farm

The cream coloured ones are quite hard to locate being a late, small-run issue, and they were also sold as premiums, sellotaped to cartons of Dairylea cheese spread, in a little box.

Clearly inspired by Herald farm animals!

I remember the Dairylea premiums and thought Britains had miniaturised their 1:32nd scale series as there was no indicator on the Dairylea packaging who made them.

That's an excelent topic!
A lot to know and a thread to keep as reference and to be revisited.
Interesting that Nuno Mata, a Portuguese collector is following your blog. I read often his blog although he doesn't collect animal figures.

smallscaleworld wrote:

I promised when I joined to do an Airfix page...here it is!



There are plenty of histories of Airfix around so I won't bore you with one of those, but suffice to say, when they first moved from general household good into toys, they were pirates, copying from European flats and an American company called Beton (BErgaN TOy CompaNy). The mounted figure they copied included several fox-hunting figures, and while there was never a fox (to my knowledge) they did add two beagle poses at some point. The beagles were then joined with other breeds and sold with a little garden-kennel.

There's more on the range on my blog here;

Bergen / Beton, Airfix et. al.

I have the beagle with the pose on the extreme right and a red setter. Both are in a reddish brown colour.

Chris Sweetman wrote:

I have the beagle with the pose on the extreme right and a red setter. Both are in a reddish brown colour.

Don't tell us, show us!

I lile the "Who says you ever have to grow up?"

They are beautyful, Chris

AlopexLagopus wrote:

I lile the "Who says you ever have to grow up?"

Too true AlopexLagopus.   

SUSANNE wrote:

They are beautyful, Chris

Thank you Susanne - I totally agree!  

Very interesting and nice !!