Oldest available kits

GMorrison

I wonder how many people buy the CV-41 kit at the museum, only to disciover it very little resembles the ship as it is today.

 

 Good Point!  That Revell kit is dated and has little resemblance to the Museum ship docked in San Diego. I did not buy a kit at the gift shop but went and got the Arii 1/800 kit while still available in the US stores. It is at least a bit closer to the USS Midway Museum ship .  I could never afford the very accurate Orange Hobby kit.

Retired In Kalifornia

...The "FROG Model Aircraft 1932-1976" book by Richard Lines & Leif Hellström (New Cavendish Books 1989) says NOVO - A British Company - (1976-1981) "acquired" all but the Axis aircraft moulds shipping them off to the Soviet Union where subsequently millions of kits were produced some of which still for sale today.

Even as NOVO was commencing operations several Soviet toy manufacturers most notably Novoexport - a state-owned Enterprise - were producing old FROGs from 1976 till 1989 probably as well up to the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991. The FROG Model Aircraft book (page 196) says they'd produced 2,750,000 as "NOVO" kits though technically they weren't, couple of these I'd came across whilst building in the early 1990s.

Far as I know none of the post WWII FROG plastics are currently in production. The FROG Model Aircraft book said the "Soviet" molds were not well cared for even in the 1980s so guessing going on near 30 years later they've been "recycled", are land fill, or a lucky couple in the hands of an old model mold collector.

 

Ark Models is currently re-releasing former Frog kits but I don't believe any go back to the thirties.

Varney did release a Stearman PT17 kit in 1946.  It is currently available from Lindberg as part of a double plane kit and may really be the oldest scale model available.

Hawk did release a series of racing planes between 46' and 48'.  They were recently reissued but are not now in Round Two catalog.

Revell's PT 109 has got to be among the oldest out there. Early sixties, if I recall, and the molds are showing. I just gave a partially completed one to my son to play with after giving up on it. Everything had a horrible fit. Everything.