James May raids the Airfix archives to reveal how designers, graphic designers and production teams get a scale model from the drawing board concept to finished product. He also looks at the world of modellers and collectors.

The Airfix Book of Scale Modelling is the essential guide to getting the most out of this fascinating and rewarding hobby, explaining how to build scale models to suit all levels of modelling skill. With full colour photography throughout, the book covers the history of modelling and of the Airfix company, and shows how injection moulded kits are made. It then describes and reviews the major modelling scales, as well as outlining the range of paints, tools and accessories that are available. Chapters include guides to choosing a kit, tools for the job, painting, decals, conversions, figure-painting, dioramas and more. Common problems and how to solve them are addressed, and there is also a series of step-by-step construction projects, including expert builds of the F86 Sabre jet, the Aston Martin DBR9, a Panzer IV tank, the Airfix yeoman figure (reissued for the London 2012 Olympics), a Trafalgar class submarine and a scenic diorama.

Inspired by James’s exploits, the book covers both the stories behind a number of classic toys and the adventures in summer 2009 as James and his helpers, children and adults of all ages, build and recreate a range of toys in a series of Top Gear style escapades. In six ambitious projects, he enlists the help of volunteers and schoolchildren to help him build a 1/1 scale model kit of a Supermarine Spitfire Mk I; creates the world’s longest Scalextric track at the historic Brooklands motor-racing circuit in Surrey; builds a full-size Lego house; enters a garden made entirely from Plasticine in the RHS Chelsea Flower Show; runs a Hornby train set along a 10-mile stretch of track from Barnstaple to Bideford and uses a giant Meccano bridge to span the 40ft Pier Head canal in Liverpool. !--StartFragment-- !--EndFragment-- Each chapter includes details of how the projects were constructed, with diagrams, illustrations and informal photography taken during the filming. The book also features a history of the toys themselves, from true British roots to their international appeal today. Toy Stories also offers 12 simple but fun projects linked to these toys to carry out in your own home, accompanied by step-by-step instructions, illustrations and diagrams.

The best-known and most important manufacturer of plastic model kits in the UK, Airfix has been at the forefront of the industry since 1955 when the first Airfix aircraft kit appeared in UK branches of Woolworth's. The kits were made to a constant scale and covered a wide variety of subjects, from aircraft to birds and from tanks to dinosaurs. In 1981 the famous London-based company closed down and only the kits survived intact. For the next twenty-five years Airfix was run by Palitoy and later Humbrol, but suffered from a lack of investment. In 2006, Hornby Hobbies Ltd, the train and Scalextric manufacturer, bought the ailing company and transformed it. Money and resources were ploughed into the range, and today Airfix releases around twenty new kits per year, designed to an incredibly high standard. The old kits of the 1950s and 1960s are gradually being replaced by new state-of-the-art tooling, all bearing that most prestigious name - Airfix. Published to coincide with the sixtieth anniversary of the first Airfix aircraft kit, Sixty Years of Airfix Models, tells the full story, year by year, of the company and its products. Illustrated throughout with colour photographs.of kits, box art and completed models.

Airfix was founded in 1939, initially manufacturing inflatable rubber toys. Now, they are synonymous with the modeling hobby. This book covers 50 years of the famous Airfix plastic soldier, from its production beginnings in 1958 through to the present day, detailing every figure Airfix has ever produced.

Airfix acquired the first plastic injection moulding machine in the U.K. in the mid 1940's and was soon manufacturing vast numbers of plastic toys. By 1981, when Airfix's financial woes led to takeover and the end of all production save for plastic model kits, it had made a wide variety of toys, games, arts, crafts, building sets, racing sets, model trains and even Meccano and Dinky toys. Profusely illustrated with over three hundred photographs, Forty Years of Airfix Toys gives the full history of the Airfix toy range including year-by-year listings of all the toys sold by Airfix; logs and packaging; Airfix's magazines and a full listing of Airfix pattern numbers. It is a comprehensive guide to the history of the toys produced by the iconic brand Airfix.

This fun book treats you to a nostalgic look at the history of model kits from worldwide manufacturers over the last 75 years. Classic Kits revisits our favourite model kits whether they were tanks, ships, aircraft, spaceships or tractors. With superb photography of boxes, magazines, kits and ephemera Arthur Ward reminds us all of a time when pocket money was spent on a Spitfire after school, which was assembled by tea time and destroyed, in an imaginary but fierce air battle, by bed-time. Arthur Ward, with his expert knowledge, reveals the histories of the companies behind the kits we all loved, while at the same time giving us a fun look at our favourite models. Book jacket.