This is a brief look at the former NOVO model company, a British company that manufactured its kits in Russia using with the old FROG molds from 1977-1980.
Used to get Novo kits in boxes, around 77 to 79 in England. Half the price of Airfix or Revell, so I assumed half the quality, but I recall the Gloster Whittle in particular was a good one. A bad moulded kit would quickly become a wipe out diorama, and cheap bits were great for your own spaceship creations. Wonderful channel, love the intricate, intertwined histories of these companies, all the alliances and rivalries, like Medieval Italian states.
Thank you for this wonderful video. I did build two NOVO kits forty-one (!) years ago, an Airspeed Oxford and a Miles Magister. I liked them very much, especially the Oxford (the cuteness of the originals helped in the appeal; I was 19, life smiled, and that helped too!) I would really love to lay my hands on those kits again. Very pleasant and unpretentious little beauties. What is true is that the transfers were hardly usable, the RAF roundels didn´t even stay concentric! Yet these were easy to replace from the spares box, so no real bitching here, either. If I had an Oxford today, I would try a conversion to a gun-turret equipped Mk I. Hell, I might start trawling e-Bay for one! I wish you all the best, health & happiness galore.
Yes, you can also use heat streched sprue for that, or disolve pieces of sprue in extra thin cement to create "sprue goo". And unlike regular putty, disolved polystyrene will create a strong joint which is easy to rescribe or polish.
From a retail perspective NOVO kits sold indifferently and usually ended up on sale to get rid of them. The old FROG kits on the other hand sold well long after the company folded, especially as they got to be collectible. Trivia- the early FROG kits were flying models so the first plastic kits were named Penguin because they didn't fly.
When Novo re-issued Frog kits, the range included many models that had been unavailable for years. So that gave modellers a chance to pick up vintage kits without paying vintage-kit prices. At the other extreme, some very late Frog kits were never released by Frog themselves, but were issued by Novo. In the middle were models that were still in the Frog range when Frog folded. I do have a few Novo kits, but not sure if I ever actually built any of them.
That same story from the other side. In the end of 1970s a line of very strange kits appeared in the shops all around the USSR. They came in poorly printed cardstock boxes that not mentioned the subject. It was just a picture of the aircraft and the designation saying: "Aircraft. Index 408" or: "Plastic kit. Index 168". Those of us who owned a copy of the Air Defence Officer's Handbook could easily figure out that the '408 was Gloster Javelin. But the '168... mmm... it really took some serious research to recognize it's D.H.88 Comet. Later it was discovered that there's a British company called FROG and the mysterious indexes refer to their catalog. Guys hand copied the full list of kits/indexes from one another and this secret brotherhood provided a basis for local modelling clubs. Strange thing was that this kits came in weird 1/72 scale instead of correct 1/50, 1/100, or 1/150 like the kits we used to build - Ogonyok, Krugozor and East German Plasticart. To our surprise the next year Plasticart also released two new kits in that odd scale - Sukhoy Su-7 and Beriev Be-6. What's going on???? Why 1/72? Does the World gone mad???
Greetings from Clay County, Missouri! Ha! All I could think of @6:03 was: His bass sounded like a bleeding VC10. Saw them twice in the '80s I think my ears are STILL ringing Thanks Max! 58 thumbs up from this 59yo kid later
Built a Novo "Blackburn Skua" and "Lavochkin La-7" as a kid. Decals in both turned to dust when placed in water. Both kits were ok otherwise as I recall. I still have at least one of them 30+ years later. Both were in bags when new.
I did build quite a few of the Novo kits way back as a kid in the early eighties. I remember at least a couple of Airspeed Oxfords, the Wallace and a Vickers Vimy, which ended up as a monoplane because I could never get the top wing to stay in place. They were very cheap, about a buck or so, maybe something less for the bagged kits, and yoi could find them in the supermarket or stationery store, along with Matchbox kits. Even then I didn't consider them as good quality, but were what I could afford with my limited funds. Plastic quality was pretty inconsistent, ranging from hard and brittle to something with the consistency of warm mozzarella cheese. If they indeed came from different factories and suppliers that would be explained very well. The flash was usually enough to build another model from it, and there were usually short shot parts and sink marks when the plastic was the softer kind, as well as cloudy clear parts sometimes with air bubbles inside the plastic, which would not go away with polishing them (back then with toothpaste or brass polish!). As to decals, I never found one sheet that did not explode upon contact with water, even then when they were new(ish). They were also usually off register, and I have a dim memory of their not having the clear carrier coat on them, hence being unusable.
I remember building their Blackburn Skua in the late '70s - terrible, but the only one available. The decals dissolved as soon as I put them in water. I never got that far with their Whitley, which was impossible to build.
I built the Novo Supermarine S-6B Schneider Tropy racer. It was plagued by thick trailing edges, soft detail, a fair amount of flash and thick, difficult to apply decals. It took some effort, but I made it work, and in the immortal words of Max: "It looks good sitting on the shelf!"
I'm knocking together the Novo Sea Fury at the moment. It's much as I remember the old Frog kit being, with the exception of the propeller being a single piece rather than individual blades moulded onto segments of the boss fitting into the rear of the spinner. I blanked off the main gear bays with 10 thou plasticard and used main wheels from a Matchbox Tempest. I'll replace the main gear doors with items cut from plasticard. Otherwise the build is straight from the box.
I've 2 of the NOVO kits, the Supermarine Attacker, and The Spirit of St Louis, the attacker was built back in the 80's, when purchased it's price was very cheap, missing a stabilizer a clear canopy and landing gears, had to do some scratchbuilding then. I still keep the Spirit of St Louis inside the NOVO Box unbuilt. Another interesting thing was when they were boxed, the boxes weren't plastified, like you've mentioned....it was a gamble. But now I still enjoy to see these old Russian kits.
I made a couple when I was about 10 years old. They were so cheap I could get several instead of one for my pocket money. I remember making the Fairey Barracuda twice, I enjoyed it so much. I made the Fairey Swordfish a few years ago, before the new airfix one came out, and thought it looked better than the old Matchbox or Airfix ones. But it did take a lot of work to get there.
I doubt the temperature would bother you much flying over the Himalayan Mountains in an open cockpit. The lack of oxygen would get you first. This is a great channel.
Actually they did it. Two Westland planes flew over Mount Everest for the first time on April, 4th 1933, so the Frog/Novo box art is undoubtly adequate. By the time, they had oxygen and heating system on board.
I have couple of them in my stash. Some, like the Blenheim Mk.I of Beaufighter, are quite nice - no interior details of course, but Beaufighter has even usable decals. Novo Swordfish was also the only one I saw for long time. I also have several kits that were boxed for the Eastern market - usually named just Model for building F.(number) with atrociously ughly two-color box, with manufacturers labeled with a stamp on them - usually Tashkentskii zavod igrushek or Donetskii zavod igrushek. And there was allways a lot of oil on the pressings. I have for example at least two Westland Wallaces like this. In the post-Soviet era they changed the boxes and kept the oil, but rest was similar. From that period I have Blackburn Skua. Many molds were acquired by the Poles, and those at least have sort of good decals. There's still a company in Russia that works like the old Novo, Eastern Express. It bought several molds from Frog era but also much better molds from late 1990s Russian and Ukrainian companies like Toko or Roden. Ark is just another brand/rename of Eastern Express.
Novo was a British company set up by DCM (the owners of Rovex post Line Bros / Triang who made Frog tooling and kits). The Frog tooling was paid for by sending a set number of kits per tool back from over a dozen Russian factories to Novo in Peterborough where they were packed, (the number required to be sent back included Russian home market boxed versions I think). This was organised by a Russian partner company called Novoexport. So a Novo kit in the blue boxes is in effect a re-branded Frog kit without the original companies overheads. What's not clear is whether the Rovex moulding machines were also sent to Russia as well, presumably they must have been and that is where the flash and tooling care problems arose. This process is not uncommon in the automotive industry, passing on tooling and branding West to East.
I built the Novo De Havilland Hornet nog long ago. Picked it up second hand at a model exhibition. Not too bad. About the same level of quality as the 1960's Airfix models.
I have in my stash the old FROG Douglas DC-7C kit in BOAC markings. On the lower box cover it reads, "Fastest Airliner Across the Atlantic." Curiously, I've never seen this kit reissued by NOVO or any other company which is too bad as it's a really nice model in 1/96 scale.
I've built both of their Hunters and the Mk-1 Blenheim from them. The older Hunter kit is awful and has between 10 and 15 parts but the later tooling it a reasonable kit. I was very impressed by the Blenheim though and it turned out quite well when built up. I have built quite a few kits from the eastern block including kits from KP, Zvezda, SMER, Mistercraft, Plasticart and ZTS. I do find them quite fun to build due to the stranger subjects and the work required to complete them.
I bought them in the UK in poor quality cardboard boxes (often crushed). The plastics varied between very soft (only just harder than cheddar) to brittle and shiny. I can't think of them without feeling sad!
Most of my Novo kits have come from the UK. Unfortunately for me pretty much all the boxes are now squashed. They weren't when listed on ebay but for some reason British ebay sellers believe that Brown paper has magical qualities that make it a suitable packaging material for the rigors of International shipping but it doesn't so the boxes get trashed. Which sucks when they're for a collection without any desires of being built
@@MartintheTinman I wonder if there will ever be a bottom for British decadence. That former grand country is going fast to the dogs, and no one seems to care.....
@@MartintheTinman "... for some reason British ebay sellers believe that Brown paper has magical qualities that make it a suitable packaging material for the rigors of International shipping but it doesn't so the boxes get trashed." That level of idiocy and disrespect for the customer, of bad education and rudeness, that devil-may-care attitude, is unfortunately widespread amongst British dealers, and would have been inconceivable in the halcyon days of, for example, the venerable BMW (Models) of the early ´70´s. Britain has gone from Beatles to Stormzy, and only God knows where she will stop.....
@@javiergilvidal1558 . Okay, now that makes sense. I believe it's a product of every Governments desire to have an unthinking population whatever country because thinkers ate trouble makers. Personally I haven't seen a change because back in the eighties when my relatives in the UK would send kits for my Birthday and Christmas they were also just wrapped in Brown paper
Great video. I do have quite a few Novo kits in the loft. Some gipsy moths in bags. The rest in bags with card headers or boxes. To be hosest I enjoy making them. Some I have the FROG releases too. The decals are always garbage and never get used but if I have the FROG kit there is sometimes two choices so I build both, or use aftermarket, or my large decal stash. I have never had a problem with the quality of the plastic, only flash. One I have is a Beaufort which has so much flash it resembles a vacform, and I am not exaggerating I have model of the Spitfire MKVIII/IX kit that is post NOVO. the box picture is so bad I was undecided what aircraft it represented. It seemed to be rear of a Spitfire with the front of a P47 and unrecognisable wings. If someone is a modeller and not just an assembler then these are great products to start with to work your skills on. Some on the FROG kits are great subjects and well worthy of the time to build them. Happy modelling and stay safe folks.
Built some of the NOVO kits when first made by the Russians and they were very close to the originals. They were popular because of the subjects, for me mostly Fleet Air Arm and early jets that nobody else made. Luckily many mail order model shops sold bags of Frog decals, which you could use on the NOVO kits. Quality was very close to Airfix at that time, so no complaints there.
Was waiting for this video. I bought about a 100 pounds of Novo kits. The bags had deteriorated and they were all mixed up in boxes. Guy sold them CHEAP. Was able to put a few together and they Sucked. I'm mainly a car guy so. Ended up rebagging quite a few and sold them off. The remaining parts I just put out for 20 bucks and the old guys face lit up and he smiled. I hope he knew what he was getting into.
I had their P-38 Lighting and the RAF F-4 Phantom. The Lightning was not bad (this was the era of the matchbox and the old airfix molds, so compared to those) and the decal (Virginia Marie) was acceptable. The Phantom was a complete nightmare. Huge flashes everywhere and the "decals" were in fact self adhesive stickers. Started to build that, but eventually let it go after gluing the frame. At their time Novo kits were a welcome here (Hungary), because only kits of East-European makers were available (mostly East-German and Czech) and they hardly ever made anything else than soviet origin models. So anything without a red star was a rarity.
I have seen quite a few of the Novo kits, and had a couple in my collection, but I got rid of them many years ago. You are right-they dripped with oily mold release or whatever that messy stuff was all over the plastic. They had a very crude appearance overall.
I have built a few and to be honest, not much different from the FROG kits....the main thing to watch out is the plastic are usually more brittle so it will crack easier then the FROG kits, so do not bend them too much...FROG kits are more flexible...and their clear parts are more crazed. If the FROG kit was ancient and not the greatest, so will the Novo kits...My last built was the B-25D Mitchell...I bought the kit thinking it was a FROG kit but as I removed it from the box it was a Novo kit...I still built it and happy with it.
I built the "Shell Welder" ship many years ago but can't remember if it was the Frog or Novo version. I liked it. I have a few of the Novo plane kits in the stash but have only tried to build one, wasn't a good experience.
I picked some up way back in the early 80s in the boxed version. They were OK, but very basic compared the Airfix or Matchbox I was used to. Hardly any detailing or cockpit interiors. Still they had all these Fleet Air Arm types nobody else had, so I was happy.
Again, another error. I had a Novo FW190 AND a Frog FW190 which were identical apart from the decals.I had a thing about FW190s and got them from every maker. The thing about the Frog/Novo kit was that the underside of the wings had the undercarriage moulded in the up position, and had slots you had to cut out to glue in the undercarriage as a seperate assembly for the down assembly, and just paint the "up" markings black!
When I was a teenager I bought the Novo P-40b , the box was a crude paper not really cardboard. The fit was ok , but the plastic was of low quality and kind of soft and crumbly , I think I have it some where . After awhile the glue I used didn't seem to hold it together and it started to fall apart and the decals were not to bad but not great , thats is all I can remember as I didn't buy another one !
That Frog tooling was getting on a bit years before Novo took it on. Some interesting unusual and comercially brave subjects though, a bit like Matchbox.
I built two or three Novo kits - don't recall having any major problems with them but the decals were useless as they fractured into tiny pieces on removal from the backing sheet.
The kits in bags brings back some memories for sure. I never lowered myself enough to buy a Novo kit, but did gain some perverse pleasure in endlessly modifying some Smer kits into contest winners. If you haven’t covered Smer yet I suspect that they had a similar story in regards to moulds etc.
I have built a few Smer kits, and a couple had the stampings if their prior companies still visible. You can tell the molds are tired and worn out. I imagine Novo kits are the same. Unique subjects are the only real draw of these horrid Russian kits.
Most modern kits are almost too good nowadays. I like the occasional challenge of bringing those oldies up to contest standards. That and scratch building 😁.
Směr (Czech company by the way) bought its first mould from Merit (altough I for years thought it was Aurora). Those were the various ships, and 1/40 WWI airplanes. Then they in the late 1980shad a deal with Heller, and started making 1/72 Spitfires Mk.V, Yaks 1, Hurricanes and similar machines related to Czech pilots or Russia, and later simply anything Heller would give them, like Fieseler Storch, various French bombers and stuff. That was awesome for us. In the early 2000, they took over even some Kovozávody Prostějov kits and Fairey Fulmar from Kovozávody Semily. Only then they made some of their own mold, like Focke-Wulf 190D, which is quite horrible for a kit from after 2000.
I turned a Smer Neuport Baby into a contest winner 20 years ago. I thought the scale was somewhere around 1/43, but anyways it was oversized all around. I remember sanding various parts paper thin to get the accuracy consistent with 1/48 scale. Pretty sure I had to do some scratch building as well. On the plus side, it was quite cheap and the decals were actually quite good. I always thought that the Czech’s had more on the ball and were more industrious than the Russians.
I recall model ships built by a friend of mine back in the early 60's, they were Frog DELUXE, noted for the their level of detail compared to contemporaries. Do you have any info? UK companies of interest could include Matchbox and Merit. All the best, fascinating!
I used to make Novo kits around 1979/80. They were okayish, but the decals always seemed to disintegrate when they got wet. Big problem. I often had to cut the details from the instruction sheet/box and stick them on the model instead, or use spares from other manufacturers' kits.
@@maxsmodels That shows you are REALLY young. Supermodel was a serious competitor to Italaerei (before it became Italeri; guess the original brand name was unpronounceable for non-Italians!) and ESCI in the early and mid ´70´s. Good moulding overall (not as petite or precise as Italaerei, though), and TERRIFIC subject choice. I have a Supermodel Blohm & Voss BV 138 three-engined flying boat (which was covered in an excellent article by Ray Rimell in the June 1977 issue of "Scale Models" magazine), and it was a pleasing, satisfying kit building into an impressive model.
Some (or all?) of their models have been taken over by Italeri. For instance the SM.81 Pipistrello, Supermodel original from 1973, latest reissue as Italeri #1388 in 2019. www.scalemates.com/kits/italeri-1388-savoia-marchetti-sm81-pipistrello--1029877
Here in Hungary after the "Airfix scandal" Novo kits were the only available with "western imperialist" thematic. I have built some dozens, very varying quality. E.g. Beaufighter was with vinyl self adhesive markings! All kinds of plastic quality, and many times lack of any decal. "Novoexport" was called the "bag" version, through with decent decals and instructions. "Worst of wrongs" were kits with ultra cheap brown paper box, no logos, very obscure brown/blue instructions, all with Russian texts. Drawings nothing to do with Frog originals, 3 view silhouette on box or worse, a very childish drawing. Box top said only "Масштаб 1/72" what is Russian for scale... so we called them like this. We translated all the texts, no single word about the type! The magazine "Craftsman" (Ezermester) had an article about these models article numbers and corresponding types. Ony then I have realized that I've built a DeHavilland Hornet and a P43 Lancer!
Yup just made a Fairey Gannet from a Novo bag no decals waxy textured plastic flash for days moulded in a way that it seemed impossible to remove small parts without breaking them no cockpit just heads on a plank , large gaps very little detail sticky layer of mould release ... Certainly an eye opener.
I bought a Novo Fairey Swordfish and Fairey Gannet (I think in 1980) as both were cheaper than Airfix equivalents even if they had been available, but oh my, the quality was appalling. The plastic was soft and soapy, often tearing itself apart when merely cutting. Even back then the parts had more flash than Gordon. I remember the Gannet's plastic being a weird black colour but it was also so thin in places it had the appearance of being translucent. How on earth they ever had the nerve to foist these on any kind of discerning customer is beyond me, but of course the USSR was very, very different back then and was, to the average Russian, as exciting and interesting as a new-tool Airfix is to us now. Not until much later did I realise it was actually ex-Frog.
I still have the Fairey Gannet,and a Westland Wessex in my stash, from memory it's not as bad as yours, probably a different batch. I'll have check them out again.
NOVO kits are very hit and miss. A genuine FROG is a decent, if basic model. I have 2 NOVO Whitley's and there are detail differences between them. They are made from 2 very different plastics. One is hard and brittle while the other is almost like soap. The canopy on the poorer kit was better than the other - which was very cloudy and could not be polished because there were bubbles in the plastic. NOVO kits have a lot of aftermarket support and a set of replacement canopies from FALCON in New Zealand was an inexpensive upgrade well worth getting. I have the new Airfix and used the newer kit as a reference to scratch build a better interior. They are not bad if you go in with a "short run" mindset when you build them. The Beaufort was actually quite nice.
I’ve built a couple of Russian kits - unique helicopters. They were not Novo, I can’t remember what the brand was. All I remember that everything (box info and instruction sheet) was in Cyrillic and they were packaged in really cheap boxes that were either well aged or were printed of material to look well aged (which didn’t make sense). The plastic was horrid (brittle), the fit terrible and the rotors were made of some kind of black plastic that totally resisted being glued by any kind of adhesive. The plastic for the rotor blades actually melted before my eyes when I used Plastruc liquid glue or Zap. That was as far as I went with them. My plan was always to scratch build replacement blades. Oh well, one of these decades.
I can't recall doing any Novo kits, though I have been lucky to find several old Frog kits. I have done a few kits by other Russian companies, that were reissues of Frog kits. Quality is always pathetic. Current Russian and Ukraine manufacturers are reasonably ok, but those early ones were crap.
They were certainly better than Novo decals. Even when they first appeared, the decals in Novo badged kits were pretty much unusable. They invariably broke up on contact with water. Airfix decals may not have been perfect, but they didn't tend to break up. The sad thing was that the decals used by Novo were direct copies of the decals that had come with the original FROG version of the kit - and FROG decals were very good. Not too long ago I completed a genuine FROG Spitfire VIII and I used the original decals - even though they were over 40 years old.
Back in those days Aifix molding quality wasn't much different to Novo. I built around 10 of the 1/72 novo aircraft, and thought they were great value, although at that time I didn't paint them, so not aware of any decal problems.
I build some, 40 or so years ago... the decals would disintegrate upon contact with water... I was young back then and didn't care much about things like fit and gaps and all... So all I remember is the decals... which were, well, bad
In the late 70's - early 80's Airfix weren't far behind Novo with their quality. If a decent marketing campaign had been done, & a box , they would have been a serious threat to Airfix in the UK.
Damn, I sure do like the De Havilland Comet styling, but too bad about those janky windows. I like the fared in engine pods. So.....Space Age! So Max, I have trying to look up a history and such for HK Models aka Hong Kong Models Co Ltd. I have done some searches : They have a facebk, and a dot com page but they seem cagey about their names and the business office location, which seems odd to me. I have a primary interest in 1/32 & 1/24 scale kits as far as aircraft goes, so I notice that HK has a B-24 and B-17 in 1/32........then I read about some disappointing behavior regarding the B-17 kit. Apparently this poor (Dutch? Netherlanders?) spent months designing and carving the tools for this 1/32 scale B-17, sent it out for production only to have HK start making it, and selling it, with thier HK name on it. Now I gather that our ambitious kit maker was a little blurry on overseas business protocol, and may have left himself wide open to this, IDK. But despite the controversy, I am completely enamored by this B-17 kit AND all the deets & livery available for it. Can you tell me more about HK and the infamous B-17 kit ?
Saw a few donated to the church X'mas gift for the orphanage box. Took 1 up saw the flashes and warpage I laughed out loud. No wonder it was in the donation box.
Here's a thought. Anyone know if the decent supply of old Frog kits available out there include any sneakily repackaged Novos ? Or should I file that thought under internet conspiracy theories.
I built the Novo 1/500 HMS Exeter years ago , and the kit wasn't too bad , and there was not much flash - It was well fitting , but it seems to have been a FROG Mould that had yet to be ruined by the Russians ,- one a side note - 10 years ago I also bought the NOVO 1/500 HMS Resolution , and ended up putting it in the bin , it was just bad , with horrendous flash and ill-fitting parts - just a terrible , terrible moulding mess - avoid the newer NOVO like the plague
Recently built a faa f4 corsair. It was horrible, crappy fit etc and the decals broke into pieces as soon as they even saw any h20. Ide buy one again; just to push my skills and money (to buy all the after market pieces, filler needed etc) to the limit
Used to get Novo kits in boxes, around 77 to 79 in England.
Half the price of Airfix or Revell, so I assumed half the quality, but I recall the Gloster Whittle in particular was a good one.
A bad moulded kit would quickly become a wipe out diorama, and cheap bits were great for your own spaceship creations.
Wonderful channel, love the intricate, intertwined histories of these companies, all the alliances and rivalries, like Medieval Italian states.
I think you have drawn me back to model kit building Have a great day.
Thank you for this wonderful video. I did build two NOVO kits forty-one (!) years ago, an Airspeed Oxford and a Miles Magister. I liked them very much, especially the Oxford (the cuteness of the originals helped in the appeal; I was 19, life smiled, and that helped too!) I would really love to lay my hands on those kits again. Very pleasant and unpretentious little beauties. What is true is that the transfers were hardly usable, the RAF roundels didn´t even stay concentric! Yet these were easy to replace from the spares box, so no real bitching here, either. If I had an Oxford today, I would try a conversion to a gun-turret equipped Mk I. Hell, I might start trawling e-Bay for one!
I wish you all the best, health & happiness galore.
Again, Loving the music. In these sad days it brought a smile to my face. Keep on the good work Max.
Thanks. Glad I can some folks smile.
Yup, got a couple in the stash, Gloster Javelin and The Spirit of Saint Louis . The Javelin has more flash than Gordon!
I have a Javelin that I suspect is a Novo... yellow plastic, no instructions, no decals and you cannot tell where the model ends and the flash begins.
Kits from my childhood. Thank you for video. :)
Don’t throw away that thin flash as shown at 1:19, you can use it to fill gaps seamlessly and much better than putty.
Yes, you can also use heat streched sprue for that, or disolve pieces of sprue in extra thin cement to create "sprue goo".
And unlike regular putty, disolved polystyrene will create a strong joint which is easy to rescribe or polish.
I really despise using putty because most of them continue to keep shrinking for a long time.
Yep. I remember that I fully decorated the cockpit of af a Smer's Dewoitine D.520 using the flash. It had more flash than pieces.
From a retail perspective NOVO kits sold indifferently and usually ended up on sale to get rid of them. The old FROG kits on the other hand sold well long after the company folded, especially as they got to be collectible. Trivia- the early FROG kits were flying models so the first plastic kits were named Penguin because they didn't fly.
Nova in Spanish means " no go" , so what does novo mean?
very true! FROG was an acronym for "flies right off (the)ground" for their flying models.
When Novo re-issued Frog kits, the range included many models that had been unavailable for years. So that gave modellers a chance to pick up vintage kits without paying vintage-kit prices. At the other extreme, some very late Frog kits were never released by Frog themselves, but were issued by Novo. In the middle were models that were still in the Frog range when Frog folded. I do have a few Novo kits, but not sure if I ever actually built any of them.
That same story from the other side. In the end of 1970s a line of very strange kits appeared in the shops all around the USSR. They came in poorly printed cardstock boxes that not mentioned the subject. It was just a picture of the aircraft and the designation saying: "Aircraft. Index 408" or: "Plastic kit. Index 168". Those of us who owned a copy of the Air Defence Officer's Handbook could easily figure out that the '408 was Gloster Javelin. But the '168... mmm... it really took some serious research to recognize it's D.H.88 Comet. Later it was discovered that there's a British company called FROG and the mysterious indexes refer to their catalog. Guys hand copied the full list of kits/indexes from one another and this secret brotherhood provided a basis for local modelling clubs.
Strange thing was that this kits came in weird 1/72 scale instead of correct 1/50, 1/100, or 1/150 like the kits we used to build - Ogonyok, Krugozor and East German Plasticart. To our surprise the next year Plasticart also released two new kits in that odd scale - Sukhoy Su-7 and Beriev Be-6. What's going on???? Why 1/72? Does the World gone mad???
cool
Excellent, informative, educational, lighting and helpful. Thank you for your time, effort in sharing. Appreciate it.
Greetings from Clay County, Missouri!
Ha! All I could think of @6:03 was: His bass sounded like a bleeding VC10. Saw them twice in the '80s I think my ears are STILL ringing
Thanks Max! 58 thumbs up from this 59yo kid later
Built a Novo "Blackburn Skua" and "Lavochkin La-7" as a kid. Decals in both turned to dust when placed in water. Both kits were ok otherwise as I recall. I still have at least one of them 30+ years later. Both were in bags when new.
Thank you your channel is awesome.
I did build quite a few of the Novo kits way back as a kid in the early eighties. I remember at least a couple of Airspeed Oxfords, the Wallace and a Vickers Vimy, which ended up as a monoplane because I could never get the top wing to stay in place. They were very cheap, about a buck or so, maybe something less for the bagged kits, and yoi could find them in the supermarket or stationery store, along with Matchbox kits. Even then I didn't consider them as good quality, but were what I could afford with my limited funds.
Plastic quality was pretty inconsistent, ranging from hard and brittle to something with the consistency of warm mozzarella cheese. If they indeed came from different factories and suppliers that would be explained very well.
The flash was usually enough to build another model from it, and there were usually short shot parts and sink marks when the plastic was the softer kind, as well as cloudy clear parts sometimes with air bubbles inside the plastic, which would not go away with polishing them (back then with toothpaste or brass polish!).
As to decals, I never found one sheet that did not explode upon contact with water, even then when they were new(ish). They were also usually off register, and I have a dim memory of their not having the clear carrier coat on them, hence being unusable.
Just love your videos. So informative. Hello from Canada.
Have to say that I never heard of NOVO before all though I remember Frog quite well
I remember building their Blackburn Skua in the late '70s - terrible, but the only one available. The decals dissolved as soon as I put them in water. I never got that far with their Whitley, which was impossible to build.
I built the Novo Supermarine S-6B Schneider Tropy racer. It was plagued by thick trailing edges, soft detail, a fair amount of flash and thick, difficult to apply decals. It took some effort, but I made it work, and in the immortal words of Max: "It looks good sitting on the shelf!"
I'm knocking together the Novo Sea Fury at the moment. It's much as I remember the old Frog kit being, with the exception of the propeller being a single piece rather than individual blades moulded onto segments of the boss fitting into the rear of the spinner. I blanked off the main gear bays with 10 thou plasticard and used main wheels from a Matchbox Tempest. I'll replace the main gear doors with items cut from plasticard. Otherwise the build is straight from the box.
I've 2 of the NOVO kits, the Supermarine Attacker, and The Spirit of St Louis, the attacker was built back in the 80's, when purchased it's price was very cheap, missing a stabilizer a clear canopy and landing gears, had to do some scratchbuilding then. I still keep the Spirit of St Louis inside the NOVO Box unbuilt. Another interesting thing was when they were boxed, the boxes weren't plastified, like you've mentioned....it was a gamble. But now I still enjoy to see these old Russian kits.
Nice (Frog, Novo) company, I've known it and have been playing with it for 50 years 👍
I made a couple when I was about 10 years old. They were so cheap I could get several instead of one for my pocket money. I remember making the Fairey Barracuda twice, I enjoyed it so much.
I made the Fairey Swordfish a few years ago, before the new airfix one came out, and thought it looked better than the old Matchbox or Airfix ones. But it did take a lot of work to get there.
I recall doing the same, at around the same age, the Vickers Vimy, Soviet SB2 and the Spirit of St Louis were among them.
I doubt the temperature would bother you much flying over the Himalayan Mountains in an open cockpit. The lack of oxygen would get you first. This is a great channel.
Oxyge....oxy...o..zzzz.......
Actually they did it. Two Westland planes flew over Mount Everest for the first time on April, 4th 1933, so the Frog/Novo box art is undoubtly adequate. By the time, they had oxygen and heating system on board.
@@andreamassara590 One crew man did pass out when his oxygen hose disconnected.
I have couple of them in my stash. Some, like the Blenheim Mk.I of Beaufighter, are quite nice - no interior details of course, but Beaufighter has even usable decals. Novo Swordfish was also the only one I saw for long time. I also have several kits that were boxed for the Eastern market - usually named just Model for building F.(number) with atrociously ughly two-color box, with manufacturers labeled with a stamp on them - usually Tashkentskii zavod igrushek or Donetskii zavod igrushek. And there was allways a lot of oil on the pressings. I have for example at least two Westland Wallaces like this. In the post-Soviet era they changed the boxes and kept the oil, but rest was similar. From that period I have Blackburn Skua. Many molds were acquired by the Poles, and those at least have sort of good decals.
There's still a company in Russia that works like the old Novo, Eastern Express. It bought several molds from Frog era but also much better molds from late 1990s Russian and Ukrainian companies like Toko or Roden. Ark is just another brand/rename of Eastern Express.
Very interesting, I'll take that VC10, or Caravelle. Thanks Max!
Novo was a British company set up by DCM (the owners of Rovex post Line Bros / Triang who made Frog tooling and kits). The Frog tooling was paid for by sending a set number of kits per tool back from over a dozen Russian factories to Novo in Peterborough where they were packed, (the number required to be sent back included Russian home market boxed versions I think).
This was organised by a Russian partner company called Novoexport. So a Novo kit in the blue boxes is in effect a re-branded Frog kit without the original companies overheads. What's not clear is whether the Rovex moulding machines were also sent to Russia as well, presumably they must have been and that is where the flash and tooling care problems arose. This process is not uncommon in the automotive industry, passing on tooling and branding West to East.
Thanks for that.
I built the Novo De Havilland Hornet nog long ago. Picked it up second hand at a model exhibition. Not too bad. About the same level of quality as the 1960's Airfix models.
I have one in the stash, bagged, it has instructions and decals, it is kit F162, a 1/72 Blackburn Skua Dive Bomber.
I have in my stash the old FROG Douglas DC-7C kit in BOAC markings. On the lower box cover it reads, "Fastest Airliner Across the Atlantic." Curiously, I've never seen this kit reissued by NOVO or any other company which is too bad as it's a really nice model in 1/96 scale.
I've built both of their Hunters and the Mk-1 Blenheim from them. The older Hunter kit is awful and has between 10 and 15 parts but the later tooling it a reasonable kit. I was very impressed by the Blenheim though and it turned out quite well when built up. I have built quite a few kits from the eastern block including kits from KP, Zvezda, SMER, Mistercraft, Plasticart and ZTS. I do find them quite fun to build due to the stranger subjects and the work required to complete them.
I bought them in the UK in poor quality cardboard boxes (often crushed). The plastics varied between very soft (only just harder than cheddar) to brittle and shiny. I can't think of them without feeling sad!
Most of my Novo kits have come from the UK.
Unfortunately for me pretty much all the boxes are now squashed.
They weren't when listed on ebay but for some reason British ebay sellers believe that Brown paper has magical qualities that make it a suitable packaging material for the rigors of International shipping but it doesn't so the boxes get trashed.
Which sucks when they're for a collection without any desires of being built
@@MartintheTinman I wonder if there will ever be a bottom for British decadence. That former grand country is going fast to the dogs, and no one seems to care.....
@@javiergilvidal1558 . I don't understand what your comment has to do with Novo kits.
@@MartintheTinman "... for some reason British ebay sellers believe that Brown paper has magical qualities that make it a suitable packaging material for the rigors of International shipping but it doesn't so the boxes get trashed." That level of idiocy and disrespect for the customer, of bad education and rudeness, that devil-may-care attitude, is unfortunately widespread amongst British dealers, and would have been inconceivable in the halcyon days of, for example, the venerable BMW (Models) of the early ´70´s. Britain has gone from Beatles to Stormzy, and only God knows where she will stop.....
@@javiergilvidal1558 . Okay, now that makes sense.
I believe it's a product of every Governments desire to have an unthinking population whatever country because thinkers ate trouble makers.
Personally I haven't seen a change because back in the eighties when my relatives in the UK would send kits for my Birthday and Christmas they were also just wrapped in Brown paper
Great video. I do have quite a few Novo kits in the loft. Some gipsy moths in bags. The rest in bags with card headers or boxes. To be hosest I enjoy making them. Some I have the FROG releases too. The decals are always garbage and never get used but if I have the FROG kit there is sometimes two choices so I build both, or use aftermarket, or my large decal stash. I have never had a problem with the quality of the plastic, only flash. One I have is a Beaufort which has so much flash it resembles a vacform, and I am not exaggerating I have model of the Spitfire MKVIII/IX kit that is post NOVO. the box picture is so bad I was undecided what aircraft it represented. It seemed to be rear of a Spitfire with the front of a P47 and unrecognisable wings. If someone is a modeller and not just an assembler then these are great products to start with to work your skills on. Some on the FROG kits are great subjects and well worthy of the time to build them.
Happy modelling and stay safe folks.
Built some of the NOVO kits when first made by the Russians and they were very close to the originals. They were popular because of the subjects, for me mostly Fleet Air Arm and early jets that nobody else made. Luckily many mail order model shops sold bags of Frog decals, which you could use on the NOVO kits. Quality was very close to Airfix at that time, so no complaints there.
I had the Novo Jaguar .. actually I liked the kit, from memory it went together well
I built the Gannett in original decals and finished like a toy. I knew what it was for. To fly around the room. I can make the turbo prop sound now.
Was waiting for this video. I bought about a 100 pounds of Novo kits. The bags had deteriorated and they were all mixed up in boxes. Guy sold them CHEAP. Was able to put a few together and they Sucked. I'm mainly a car guy so. Ended up rebagging quite a few and sold them off. The remaining parts I just put out for 20 bucks and the old guys face lit up and he smiled. I hope he knew what he was getting into.
I have two in my stash, and am looking forward to having a go at them.
Having a GO AT them; or just having them GO. :-) . Just kidding.
I had their P-38 Lighting and the RAF F-4 Phantom. The Lightning was not bad (this was the era of the matchbox and the old airfix molds, so compared to those) and the decal (Virginia Marie) was acceptable. The Phantom was a complete nightmare. Huge flashes everywhere and the "decals" were in fact self adhesive stickers. Started to build that, but eventually let it go after gluing the frame.
At their time Novo kits were a welcome here (Hungary), because only kits of East-European makers were available (mostly East-German and Czech) and they hardly ever made anything else than soviet origin models. So anything without a red star was a rarity.
Additional modeling stuff that I did know. Interesting for this situation. Like hearing old Beatles Tunes sung in Russian also.
I have seen quite a few of the Novo kits, and had a couple in my collection, but I got rid of them many years ago. You are right-they dripped with oily mold release or whatever that messy stuff was all over the plastic. They had a very crude appearance overall.
I can remember Frog kits repackaged as Novo in about 70 or 71. Fact, by 76 I was married and had not been doing the hobby for a while.
My dad built me HMS Torque for me as a kid, from one of those bags.
I have built a few and to be honest, not much different from the FROG kits....the main thing to watch out is the plastic are usually more brittle so it will crack easier then the FROG kits, so do not bend them too much...FROG kits are more flexible...and their clear parts are more crazed. If the FROG kit was ancient and not the greatest, so will the Novo kits...My last built was the B-25D Mitchell...I bought the kit thinking it was a FROG kit but as I removed it from the box it was a Novo kit...I still built it and happy with it.
I’ve built a few old Russian kits...don’t think they were Novo, but it was damn near like scratch building...
my first a Model smelled of mold release. I know what you mean.
I built the "Shell Welder" ship many years ago but can't remember if it was the Frog or Novo version. I liked it. I have a few of the Novo plane kits in the stash but have only tried to build one, wasn't a good experience.
I picked some up way back in the early 80s in the boxed version. They were OK, but very basic compared the Airfix or Matchbox I was used to. Hardly any detailing or cockpit interiors. Still they had all these Fleet Air Arm types nobody else had, so I was happy.
I used the NOVO Spitfire Mk.XIV as the basis for a Mk.21 conversion, it took a bit of work but turned out not too badly.
Again, another error. I had a Novo FW190 AND a Frog FW190 which were identical apart from the decals.I had a thing about FW190s and got them from every maker. The thing about the Frog/Novo kit was that the underside of the wings had the undercarriage moulded in the up position, and had slots you had to cut out to glue in the undercarriage as a seperate assembly for the down assembly, and just paint the "up" markings black!
When I was a teenager I bought the Novo P-40b , the box was a crude paper not really cardboard. The fit was ok , but the plastic was of low quality and kind of soft and crumbly , I think I have it some where . After awhile the glue I used didn't seem to hold it together and it started to fall apart and the decals were not to bad but not great , thats is all I can remember as I didn't buy another one !
That Frog tooling was getting on a bit years before Novo took it on. Some interesting unusual and comercially brave subjects though, a bit like Matchbox.
Well, at least they weren't STARFIX😱
Thoroughly enjoying this series Max . You going to cover Airfix soon? Even like the music . I should get out more!
But Air Lines Models was also using the Frog molds for their kits
It depends on the quality of the styrene and the maintenance of the molds.
Yeah saw lots of them in the 80s too.Always seemed to be somthing better to build.Besides I was a hardcore 48th scale man.
I built two or three Novo kits - don't recall having any major problems with them but the decals were useless as they fractured into tiny pieces on removal from the backing sheet.
The kits in bags brings back some memories for sure. I never lowered myself enough to buy a Novo kit, but did gain some perverse pleasure in endlessly modifying some Smer kits into contest winners. If you haven’t covered Smer yet I suspect that they had a similar story in regards to moulds etc.
I have built a few Smer kits, and a couple had the stampings if their prior companies still visible. You can tell the molds are tired and worn out. I imagine Novo kits are the same. Unique subjects are the only real draw of these horrid Russian kits.
Most modern kits are almost too good nowadays. I like the occasional challenge of bringing those oldies up to contest standards. That and scratch building 😁.
Směr (Czech company by the way) bought its first mould from Merit (altough I for years thought it was Aurora). Those were the various ships, and 1/40 WWI airplanes. Then they in the late 1980shad a deal with Heller, and started making 1/72 Spitfires Mk.V, Yaks 1, Hurricanes and similar machines related to Czech pilots or Russia, and later simply anything Heller would give them, like Fieseler Storch, various French bombers and stuff. That was awesome for us. In the early 2000, they took over even some Kovozávody Prostějov kits and Fairey Fulmar from Kovozávody Semily. Only then they made some of their own mold, like Focke-Wulf 190D, which is quite horrible for a kit from after 2000.
I turned a Smer Neuport Baby into a contest winner 20 years ago. I thought the scale was somewhere around 1/43, but anyways it was oversized all around. I remember sanding various parts paper thin to get the accuracy consistent with 1/48 scale. Pretty sure I had to do some scratch building as well. On the plus side, it was quite cheap and the decals were actually quite good. I always thought that the Czech’s had more on the ball and were more industrious than the Russians.
can't wait for a review of mach 2...rare subjects but a modeller's challenge
I recall model ships built by a friend of mine back in the early 60's, they were Frog DELUXE, noted for the their level of detail compared to contemporaries. Do you have any info? UK companies of interest could include Matchbox and Merit. All the best, fascinating!
Luv watching this especially the " Back in the USSR " track .
I used to make Novo kits around 1979/80. They were okayish, but the decals always seemed to disintegrate when they got wet. Big problem. I often had to cut the details from the instruction sheet/box and stick them on the model instead, or use spares from other manufacturers' kits.
I have a collection of Novo.
All boxed I think.
I haven't made any though
Just checked on Scalemates, I have one bagged Novo kit.
The P-40E
yadi.sk/d/jI43Z_xFdarLuA photo kits USSR is here... 18- frog novo USSR, 4- Chehoslovakia...
I remember Frog models
I had a few, you could buy
them at some newsagents.
Paul Bacchus esq
Do you have any information on an Italian model brand called supermodel I have one of their Italian aircraft and it is great
Space fan?
new to me
@@maxsmodels I hope you can do a video of KARO AS in the future :)
@@maxsmodels That shows you are REALLY young. Supermodel was a serious competitor to Italaerei (before it became Italeri; guess the original brand name was unpronounceable for non-Italians!) and ESCI in the early and mid ´70´s. Good moulding overall (not as petite or precise as Italaerei, though), and TERRIFIC subject choice. I have a Supermodel Blohm & Voss BV 138 three-engined flying boat (which was covered in an excellent article by Ray Rimell in the June 1977 issue of "Scale Models" magazine), and it was a pleasing, satisfying kit building into an impressive model.
Some (or all?) of their models have been taken over by Italeri. For instance the SM.81 Pipistrello, Supermodel original from 1973, latest reissue as Italeri #1388 in 2019.
www.scalemates.com/kits/italeri-1388-savoia-marchetti-sm81-pipistrello--1029877
Here in Hungary after the "Airfix scandal" Novo kits were the only available with "western imperialist" thematic. I have built some dozens, very varying quality. E.g. Beaufighter was with vinyl self adhesive markings! All kinds of plastic quality, and many times lack of any decal. "Novoexport" was called the "bag" version, through with decent decals and instructions. "Worst of wrongs" were kits with ultra cheap brown paper box, no logos, very obscure brown/blue instructions, all with Russian texts. Drawings nothing to do with Frog originals, 3 view silhouette on box or worse, a very childish drawing. Box top said only "Масштаб 1/72" what is Russian for scale... so we called them like this. We translated all the texts, no single word about the type! The magazine "Craftsman" (Ezermester) had an article about these models article numbers and corresponding types. Ony then I have realized that I've built a DeHavilland Hornet and a P43 Lancer!
Yup just made a Fairey Gannet from a Novo bag no decals waxy textured plastic flash for days moulded in a way that it seemed impossible to remove small parts without breaking them no cockpit just heads on a plank , large gaps very little detail sticky layer of mould release ... Certainly an eye opener.
Wow, thanks for the video, I've never seen this company before seeing this! Well done!
At least FROG, NOVO and Matchbox had interesting subjects. Its why I stuck with poor quality kits just to get a Wyvern or Hereford on my shelf.
I bought a Novo Fairey Swordfish and Fairey Gannet (I think in 1980) as both were cheaper than Airfix equivalents even if they had been available, but oh my, the quality was appalling. The plastic was soft and soapy, often tearing itself apart when merely cutting. Even back then the parts had more flash than Gordon. I remember the Gannet's plastic being a weird black colour but it was also so thin in places it had the appearance of being translucent. How on earth they ever had the nerve to foist these on any kind of discerning customer is beyond me, but of course the USSR was very, very different back then and was, to the average Russian, as exciting and interesting as a new-tool Airfix is to us now.
Not until much later did I realise it was actually ex-Frog.
I still have the Fairey Gannet,and a Westland Wessex in my stash, from memory it's not as bad as yours, probably a different batch. I'll have check them out again.
I've only eer seen Novo kits. Never touched one.
NOVO kits are very hit and miss. A genuine FROG is a decent, if basic model. I have 2 NOVO Whitley's and there are detail differences between them. They are made from 2 very different plastics. One is hard and brittle while the other is almost like soap. The canopy on the poorer kit was better than the other - which was very cloudy and could not be polished because there were bubbles in the plastic. NOVO kits have a lot of aftermarket support and a set of replacement canopies from FALCON in New Zealand was an inexpensive upgrade well worth getting. I have the new Airfix and used the newer kit as a reference to scratch build a better interior. They are not bad if you go in with a "short run" mindset when you build them. The Beaufort was actually quite nice.
I’ve built a couple of Russian kits - unique helicopters. They were not Novo, I can’t remember what the brand was. All I remember that everything (box info and instruction sheet) was in Cyrillic and they were packaged in really cheap boxes that were either well aged or were printed of material to look well aged (which didn’t make sense).
The plastic was horrid (brittle), the fit terrible and the rotors were made of some kind of black plastic that totally resisted being glued by any kind of adhesive. The plastic for the rotor blades actually melted before my eyes when I used Plastruc liquid glue or Zap.
That was as far as I went with them. My plan was always to scratch build replacement blades. Oh well, one of these decades.
I bought a few in the 79 80 time frame the kits were ok the decals were unusable.
Frog always was difficult to work with.
I can't recall doing any Novo kits, though I have been lucky to find several old Frog kits.
I have done a few kits by other Russian companies, that were reissues of Frog kits. Quality is always pathetic. Current Russian and Ukraine manufacturers are reasonably ok, but those early ones were crap.
Back in those days Airfix decals weren’t much better.
They were certainly better than Novo decals. Even when they first appeared, the decals in Novo badged kits were pretty much unusable. They invariably broke up on contact with water. Airfix decals may not have been perfect, but they didn't tend to break up.
The sad thing was that the decals used by Novo were direct copies of the decals that had come with the original FROG version of the kit - and FROG decals were very good. Not too long ago I completed a genuine FROG Spitfire VIII and I used the original decals - even though they were over 40 years old.
Back in those days Aifix molding quality wasn't much different to Novo. I built around 10 of the 1/72 novo aircraft, and thought they were great value, although at that time I didn't paint them, so not aware of any decal problems.
I build some, 40 or so years ago... the decals would disintegrate upon contact with water... I was young back then and didn't care much about things like fit and gaps and all... So all I remember is the decals... which were, well, bad
Just bought a NOVO glider today
I was surprised that Frog has a B-17E kit! Also when you gonna do a look at Starfix? After NOVO has gotta be the world's worst model kit company!
The B-17 and Lancaster were amongst the last kits produced by FROG.
In the late 70's - early 80's Airfix weren't far behind Novo with their quality. If a decent marketing campaign had been done, & a box , they would have been a serious threat to Airfix in the UK.
NOVO kits were great when they first took over the old FROG moulds but over time the quality just deteriorated very badley.
1877 to 1980? That really is long. They must have been really ahead of their time. (lol)
dooh
I don't think I've ever heard of them
I guess we take Tamiya and Revel for granted.
Damn, I sure do like the De Havilland Comet styling, but too bad about those janky windows. I like the fared in engine pods. So.....Space Age!
So Max, I have trying to look up a history and such for HK Models aka Hong Kong Models Co Ltd.
I have done some searches :
They have a facebk, and a dot com page but they seem cagey about their names and the business office location, which seems odd to me.
I have a primary interest in 1/32 & 1/24 scale kits as far as aircraft goes, so I notice that HK has a B-24 and B-17 in 1/32........then I read about some disappointing behavior regarding the B-17 kit. Apparently this poor (Dutch? Netherlanders?) spent months designing and carving the tools for this 1/32 scale B-17, sent it out for production only to have HK start making it, and selling it, with thier HK name on it.
Now I gather that our ambitious kit maker was a little blurry on overseas business protocol, and may have left himself wide open to this, IDK.
But despite the controversy, I am completely enamored by this B-17 kit AND all the deets & livery available for it. Can you tell me more about HK and the infamous B-17 kit ?
Not everything was negative about them, though. The subject matter was interesting and they fit no worse than their Airfix or Revell contemporaries.
i have a Fairey Delta and a Twin Mustang boxed to assemble
Do a video on Moebius Models. Please.
Novo kit decals set a new standard in poor quality. :-) Still love them even if they are like zombie-FROGs
Saw a few donated to the church X'mas gift for the orphanage box. Took 1 up saw the flashes and warpage I laughed out loud. No wonder it was in the donation box.
Here's a thought. Anyone know if the decent supply of old Frog kits available out there include any sneakily repackaged Novos ? Or should I file that thought under internet conspiracy theories.
I built the Novo 1/500 HMS Exeter years ago , and the kit wasn't too bad , and there was not much flash - It was well fitting , but it seems to have been a FROG Mould that had yet to be ruined by the Russians ,- one a side note - 10 years ago I also bought the NOVO 1/500 HMS Resolution , and ended up putting it in the bin , it was just bad , with horrendous flash and ill-fitting parts - just a terrible , terrible moulding mess - avoid the newer NOVO like the plague
Recently built a faa f4 corsair. It was horrible, crappy fit etc and the decals broke into pieces as soon as they even saw any h20. Ide buy one again; just to push my skills and money (to buy all the after market pieces, filler needed etc) to the limit
Don't put these model kits too close to other kits of a better quality, because this might lead to a Novovirus infection.
I built a few frog kits like the 1/72 attacker. They are very poor quality, but any model can be good with enough skill.
That band wasn't bad!
In America, you build model kit. In Russia, model kit builds you.
Glad I never built these.
some were better than others.....for some,you need a hammer and sickle on your workbench.....!
Built Novo's Whitley. Terrible mouldings. Misformed. Finished product was more plasticard and putty than original kit. Never again
Sounds like Smer kits... total garbage. I have one or two Novo kits. Some are OK some I won't bother working on.