RIP the plastic Spitfire

2 Espressi

By Lester Haines
Published Thursday 31st August 2006 11:42 GMT

There's been a certain amount of teary-eyed nostalgia this morning down at Vulture Central at the news that the firm behind plastic model legend Airfix has gone into administration.

According to The Evening Standard, the company was formed in 1939 by Hungarian-born Nicholas Kove. At the height of its powers during the sixties, Airfix shifted 350,000 Spitfires, 80,000 Hurricanes and 60,000 Lancasters a year, but by last year sales were down to a third of that level.

Airfix's decline has been a protracted affair. It went into receivership in 1981 as enthusiasm for modelling waned. It was bought by MPC and the kit moulds and tools transferred to French company Heller. In 1986 it was acquired by Humbrol, which struggled to compete against the rise of TV, computer games, and the internet as kids' leisuretime activities of choice. A management team appointed in December 2005 failed to stop the rot. Administrators moved in to Hull-based Humbrol Ltd yesterday.

Bill Bond, of the Battle of Britain Historical Society, lamented: "It is a great shame. I remember building these models as a teenager. Spitfires were my favourite, like all children. For tens of thousands of boys this will have been integral to their childhood. I suppose it is a sign of the times. Spitfires are no longer fresh in the memory are they? Children now have PlayStations and computer games."

Sadly, the Airfix Spitfire is no more. Thirty-one of the company's 41 employees were last night made redundant after "severe cash flow pressures" and disruption of supplies from Heller - itself now insolvent - finally shot down the company.

Former Airfix sales representative Chris Rumball said: "The French wouldn't release any of the tools to us and now it has just brought us down with them."

The Airfix name may, however, live on. Keith Hinds of Grant Thornton, which is handling the administration, said: "The brand names and intellectual property of the business are potentially very valuable and we are looking to sell those to investors."

coolwings

Sad to hear that. I got started on Meccano and Airfix.
I wonder it it will make a comeback in a new form?
Unlikely if the tools are lost, I suppose.



Here is a link to the story....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5301438.stm

FiSe

RIP Airfix...

But, lads, let be honest, did any of us - plastic modellers - expect to Airfix -Heller - survive in today's market? Look at Dragon, Tamiya, Hasegawa or some of those Czech or /ex/ Russian companies.
Airfix kits were well ahead of their times in the fifties and sixties. They were nicely moulded with excellent details, back then, and still, their accuracy is meta for many above mentioned manufacturers. That's true...

Now, can you live from the past? How many new kits are out there under Airfix red disc? Let me see... 1/48 BAC Lightnings, Spitfire 22/24 from the 90's in 1/72 hot TSR2 and Wallace and Gromit in ? scale, which are all excellent kits, but too little for surviving. And, althought, Airfix plastic is reasonably priced - cheap, you get what you pay for and many of their kits have troublesome fit, they are twisted with scratched surface... All goes down to lack of investment in the past 10 - 15 yrs. And so on...

coolwings

I suspect the bottom line is that there is less money spent on plastic kits nowadays.
Kids are putting their disposable cash into phone credit, high priced music-videos, playstation and computer games, and toys which are "non-imaginative-pre-made" - not "figure it out - to be made by the buyer"....
Then, as in all business - when the money goes elsewhere, the business goes soon after.

Dragon, Hasegawa, Tamiya, Italeri and so on will still be available later.
But unless another maker takes up the brands we lose.

billyblanks

Most of our kit sales are to Kids or people buying for kids (The seasoned colllector/builder only buy on rare occasions). We stocked Airfix but it was rare that anybody bought it. I feel the main problem was their packaging was too dull and boring, it looked like something from the 50's. Revell may not make better kits but their marketing, and packaging is/was far superior to Airfix.

Airfix didn't seem to move with the times....

FiSe

Yes, that was exactly my point...
Modellers don't buy Airfix, because almost every type is done by other manufacturers and in better quality. And for kids, I personally wouldn't buy Airfix neither, because of poor quality of plastic parts.