The sixteenth century isn't a period I've ever studied in much depth, but this forum thread got me interested enough to root through some books to see what they say about it. So far the most authoritative discussion of the Golden Hind that I've found comes from Samuel Eliot Morison's The European Discovery of America, Vol. II: The Southern Voyages. Morison wasn't a sixteenth-century specialist either, but he was one of the greatest of American naval and maritime historians. The book dates from the seventies; there may have been some good, revisionist scholarship since then.
Anyway, Morison says the Golden Hind (original name Pelican) was built in France and bought by some of the investors in Drake's expedition. (Whether that name "Pelican" came from the French or the English he doesn't say.) There's scarcely any contemporary documentation about her. Morison says she had two full-length decks, either sixteen or eighteen guns, a crew of about eighty, and a "tunnage" of about one hundred (i.e., she could carry about a hundred "tuns," or double hogsheads of wine, in her hold). After her voyage around the world, Queen Elizabeth gave orders that the Golden Hind be put on public display in a shed on shore. That never happened, but the dimensions of the proposed shed survived. Morison quotes another researcher, Gregory Robinson, as having figured out, on that basis, that the Golden Hind was about ninety feet long. (Morison cites Robinson's book, which is entitled Elizabethan Ships. I tried to track that one down on the Barnes and Noble used book site. I found a book by that author with the title Elizabethan Ship; the used book dealer describes it as a "children's book." I'm debating whether to order a copy.)
All that information checks reasonably well with the Revell kit. (I suspect the people responsible for it - who clearly knew their business - used the same sources.) The primary source materials on sixteenth-century shipbuilding are pretty meager. There are some fairly detailed contemporary drawings of English ships from that period , the so-called Matthew Baker Manuscripts, in the library at Oxford, and I believe there's at least one Spanish text on shipbuilding with some drawings in it. (I can't recall the details about that one, but one of my students showed me a copy of it some years ago.) I've never heard of a significant French source from that period. That's not to say there are none, but none of the books I happen to have mentions it.
Given the hazy nature of the sources, it looks to me like it would be presumptuous to criticize anybody's reconstruction of the Golden Hind much. The Revell rendition certainly looks like those English drawings at Oxford; maybe a French-built ship wouldn't look like that, but so far as I know there's no firm evidence either way. As for the figurehead - looks to me like a deer or no figurehead at all would be appropriate. Or maybe a pelican. That would sure turn the model into a conversation piece.
Fascinating stuff, but frustrating.
Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.