frog-matchbox

Your engines should look different. The 'G' had the higher powered DBs. Sorry, used mine.

Bill Banaszak, MFE

are they the same molds? the antenni, er's, a's, look easy to scratch...so maybe i can do it.

No.

IIRC the Frog kit came first.

Tom

Back in the days when we actually had an industrial / engineering based economy, model companies would no more use each others moulds than swallow each others spit. The world of one mould / many brands was wished on us by the accountants. I have some model friends who have models of say a 'Matchbox' Spitfire or a 'Revell' or an 'Airfix' Spitfire or whatever. All nicely made and displaying the toolmakers misinterpretations, moulding shortcuts and - yes, even genius occasionally. Personally I like to use a kit as a base to replicate the original, but theirs is another spin on the hobby.

Chek Change' boos' to 'bos' in address to email directly

That's decidedly not so. Mold swapping, buying, and even pirating has occured from the very earliest days of plastic models. In the US, Lindberg bought tooling from Varney amongst others, Revell picked up the Gowland tools, Aurora bought Best's Indy racer tooling and pirated Hawk's F-90 and F9F, all in the early 50s. In the UK the first Airfix aircraft kit was a scaled-down copy of Aurora's Spitfire and some of their 1/32 scale antique cars were blatant copies of Revell kits, while FROG got into the act by selling kits from Comet tooling. Meanwhile the Japanese pirated kits left and right when their plastic model industry first started up - Marusan was especially well-known for doing that. When the industry started to develop in South Korea it was again a story of pirated copies, mostly of American and Japanese kits.

And all that's just a short synopsis of a subject way too involved to cover thoroughly in a Usenet post. Suffice it to say that there's little new under the sun when it comes to 'shared' kit tooling.

Al, Your points are valid and expose the oversimplification of my statement. After the majors became established should have been my qualifier statement. Frog did import Hasegawa moulds before Hasegawa became a force to be reckoned with, but they were already in trouble by then and it was a way to reduce tooling costs for common projects. What I meant to say was that you could be sure that the Frog Spitfire was different to the Airfix Spitfire, which was different to the Revell Spitfire and none were a copy of the Matchbox Spitfire, and so on. Each manufacturer had a 'style' that was recognisable. Can't say that today. Chek

the detail sure is similar. could matchbox have been inspired by the frog molds?

so matchbox may have indeed used frog ideas. the sprues and parts are so close.

There's only so much variation possible before you would no longer have a recognizable Spitfire. Unless the sprues are virtually identical in part-outs and location, inspriation was probably limited to looking at competitors' kits to see what the optimum part layout might be, and where improvements could be made, to get a leg up on the competition. Cost-effectiveness might have dictated using a similar parts layout, without necessarily following to the point of copying tooling. Some things to consider: Frog usually preferred separate control surfaces, often breaking down the stabilizers into as many as four pieces each port and starboard--I don't recall Matchbox going that route with any kits. Frog's kits always had raised panel lines; Matchbox may have had some of that, but I also recall the engraved trenches of a good many of their kits. Frog kits were molded all of the same color plastic; Matchbox kits were frequently molded in two or three colors (many of which were god-awful). Frog seats were very different in shape from Matchbox seats--not that either was the least bit accurate.

Mark Schynert

well, the 110 kits have some relations. even if just copying.

Possible, but doubtful. Most likely they were done from the same aircraft. The night fighter in one of the British museums.

Tom

the matchbox has better details, but isn't a nightfighter, so they just look close.

Of course. My bad.

Revell must have had collective migranes when they inherited both the Matchbox and Frog Bf 110 molds.

They used the Frog molds back then, but who knows, they may eventually use the Matchbox molds.

Wonderful confusion.

Tom

love that matchbox 110. snagging every decent priced one i can find.

The C as represented by the Matchbox kit has smaller spinners (just like a Me-109E) that should be your first noticable difference. The nose, canopy, engines and rudders were different on the G as well. Parts layout may have been copied from Frog, that's good business sense. I don't have an open Frog kit for comparison. hth

The Keeper (of too much crap)