The tradition of 1:72 plastic model aircraft kits didn’t start with Airfix, but with a company called International Model Aircraft, and their brandname FROG. IMA were partly owned by Tri-ang, and operated out of their Merton factory, using the central football field to test their flying aircraft models. The logo for these models was a winged frog, representing the acronym Flies Right Off Ground (i.e. no launcher required).
IMA then bought a plastic injection moulding machine to make their propellers (because wooden ones kept breaking), and once they had the machine, starting casting around for other things to use it for. After playing with some of the 1:72 Skybirds wood-and-metal model aircraft kits, they decided to try making something similar in plastic, and a new genre was born. Since the new models didn’t fly, IMA invented a sub-brand named after a non-flying bird, making them FROG Penguins – possibly the toy industry’s most confusing brand-name ever.
Work continues on the new aviation cabinet, labelling and interpretation will continue to improve over the next few months.
