Revell Lightning

I'd never even heard of Hasegawa in 1968. Frog were still owned by Triang-Rovex at the time.

(kim)

It is definitely the Frog:

They were so great they had my name on the box :-)

So, we still don't have a modern kit of the Lightning F6. There is a forthcoming F3 from MPM.

So here's a thought. MPM also produce kits for Xtrakits (Hannants own brand). The MPM Meteor FR9 is also the Xtrakits Meteor F8. The forthcoming Sea Vixen will be boxed by MPM as the Mk1 and by Xtrakits as the Mk2.

Given that MPM will be producing a Lightning F3, what at the chances of Xtrakits releasing an F6? Careful mould design could ensure that the wings and belly tanks all fit on one sprue. This would allow seperate sprues for the F3 and F6.

Frog had one? Airfix had one out shortly after the design became known.

Pat

Which wasn't much to get excited about in its own right.

Pat

That sure looks like the old Hasegawa one I had, right down to the above-wing fuel tanks, and Red Top missiles. Way, way, back I had this very poor model of a Lightning that was molded in silver and predated the Airfix one, at least in its MPC U.S. issue. It also had Red Tops on it, but no wingtop tanks. That may have been a Frog one, although I associate with some Japanese company, and the scale being smaller than 1/72.

Pat

Pat

Pat

no the Revell/Frog is differant to the Hase, compared them both next to each other, could be a updated copy, but there are small differances

I remember that one from the RiKo ("Richard Kohnstan") catalogue. It was listed as 1/100 and was a Japanese brand. There was also a F-104 and MiG-21 in the same series which I would have bought but for the small scale.

(kim)

Not until 1967 according to this list...

(kim)

Good heavens! There's a Blast From The Past!

Didn't they also do MiniTanks?

Probably. Almost every brand that was imported into the UK was distributed by RiKo.

(kim)

I think that he's thinking of the ROCO line of armor....

If it was the Eldon one, and the others were as good, you were wise not to buy them. They were very crude kits. I had some others in the Match Kit series (a He-111, Ju-87, Ju-88, Lancaster, B-17, Zero, Fokker D-7 and a few others I don't remember) scale was determined by what would fit in the over-sized matchbook, so all the models were about the same size. The fact that they were sold at our local Holiday gas station didn't exactly argue in their favor either.

Pat

The first time people first knew it was the delta, not swept-wing, MiG-21 that was being mass produced, was due to it's use in the 1963 Arab-Israili war. It had been seen at Soviet airshows but everyone though it was the swept-wing "Faceplate" that had been selected for mass production. No one got a really good look at one till the 1967 Arab-Israili war.

It may well have been the Hasegawa one being co-produced by Frog; like I said, it was a pretty crude kit of a MiG-21F early model like the Airfix one. Neither it or the Airfix one was very good, but the Airfix was probably the lesser of two evils, as it was a bit more detailed looking. The interesting one was the IMC version of a MiG-21PF, which gave you the option of showing the aircraft after a missile hit with the pilot ejecting:

I don't remember that one but I do remember other IMC kits, especially the bullet-ridden A4. They cost quite a lot more than a dollar by the time they reached England. My walk to school took me past a shop that specialised in American imports such as Monogram and Aurora so I spent a lot of time looking in the shop window.

(kim)

They had a Super Sabre, RF-4C Phantom II, and Skyraider as well as the Skyhawk and MiG-21 The Skyraider had a transparent molded plastic "spinning" prop included, witch didn't look as good as the transparent sheet plastic discs that MPC used.

Pat

According to this article it's the exact same model in different boxes: