Infinity readers of all ages will surely have fond memories of Airfix kits, many of them bought from ‘Woolies’ back in the day. Jeremy Brook looks back on the iconic model company that was originally set up to manufacture inflatable rubber toys!

Author Jeremy Brook, photographed by Glenn Phillips

In 1952, a small British plastic toy manufacturer chose to mould its first plastic construction kit for release, most likely in 1953. It was a decision that would lead it to become the most famous kit company in the world, and 70 years later it is still producing new models. The kit was the Golden Hind and the company is Airfix.

In 1938, a Hungarian Jew by the name of Miklós Klein arrived in England. He had been based in Spain where he had patented a process for stiffening shirt collars, called “Interfix”; it seems he had an interest in words ending in ‘ix’. Looming civil war in Spain, made him move to Italy but the Fascist government’s ties to Hitler meant it was not a safe country for a Jewish-run business, so he took his family to England, where he changed his name to Nicolas Kove.

In 1939, he set up a new company with a factory in the Edgware Road. His first job appears to have been making rubber airbeds.

He was keen to have a company name starting with ‘A’, so it would appear at the front of a trade catalogue, and he liked the ‘ix’ ending, so he called his company AIRFIX. Since his products were technically, ‘fixed with air’, it was a very appropriate name. Nothing to do with aircraft kits!

After the war, he returned to manufacturing toys, etc, and had become good friends with Islyn Thomas, who ran Hoffman Tools in the US and was a pioneer in the plastics industry. Thomas introduced Kove to R.H. Windsor Ltd., which had recently produced an improved injection-moulding machine and was keen to find an operator for it.

Windsor’s gave the machine to Airfix, ‘on tick’ and Thomas supplied a mould for combs. Existing combs were manufactured out of cellulose with the teeth saw-cut, but Airfix’s combs were made of plastic and much superior and cheaper. Airfix soon became the biggest comb manufacture in the UK. Its principal customer was the U.K. branch of F.W. Woolworth, and ‘Woolies’ couldn’t get enough of the combs.

However, other companies were entering the comb market, so Airfix continued to develop its toy range, and in 1949 it was commissioned by Ferguson Tractors to make a promotional model of its new TE20 tractor. Harry Ferguson later allowed Airfix to sell it in the shops. Technically, it was an assembled model that could be disassembled, so not really the first Airfix kit, though in the mid-1950s, Airfix did sell it as a kit.