This project is a joint effort of a group of like-minded people, united by a love of scale plastic kit modeling and its history. Having got acquainted and started communication on the largest Russian-speaking kit maker community site Scalemodels.ru, we came to the conclusion that the historical information often found on the forums, memories and photographs is of considerable value to all who are passionate to modeling. There’s a need to collect and organize all the available information, and then represent it in a convenient form on one site. It should be noted that we were very much inspired by the example of a pioneer in this field – the Novokits.ru site, which was also created by enthusiasts, but ceased to exist at the moment.
The work was started in August 2017, and the layout and content of the site itself has been going on since December of that year, and we do not intend to stop them. Many scale modelers, whose names and nicknames you will find in many articles, have responded to requests for providing content to the site.
The initial idea was only to tell in detail only about the models of NOVO Toys Limited, but as the amount of collected materials grew, it was concluded that the topic should be expanded. Thus, on the pages of Retromodels.ru you can familiarize yourself with the history of not only NOVO and FROG kits, but the kits of other manufacturers (including Soviet and post-Soviet) as well, released in the last quarter of 20th century. In addition, the Articles section provides additional information, including the recollections of the direct participants of events significant for the period under consideration.
Special thanks go to the “ARK Models” company, which was able to save most of the molds on ex-FROG models and put them into production after the bankruptcy of the Donetsk toy factory. The company takes care of the FROG / Novo heritage, and since 2018 it has been producing a “historical” series in boxes with a “Novo style” design, classic instructions, decals and color schemes. Kit reviews from “ARK Models” are included in the Model sections for each of the kits currently available.
We will be glad to see you in our Facebook group, the link for the transfer is at the bottom of the screen. We look forward to your feedback, suggestions and questions! We want this resource to always remain interesting, relevant, regularly updated with new information and to complement and expand existing articles.
The site is planned to be developed, supplemented and improved for many years to come – if you have interesting information related to the subject of the site, drop us a line by e-mail or in the Facebook group. By doing so, you might take part in the exciting undertaking of creating an encyclopedia of plastic model kits, which gave a passion for scale modeling for at least two generations worldwide. We salute everyone, who helped us – without your support, our project would certainly not be of that size and shape, that exists today.
Special Editor’s note for our English-speaking colleagues – currently, all the content of our site is in Russian, but there are good news – first of all, the level of automated translation has really surpassed it’s infancy stage and You might get all the information in English, if You use Google “translate to…” option. Most of the content is translated properly, only 5-10% of it might seem ridiculous, and it does not harm the perception. Besides, all the content will be gradually translated to eliminate those little discrepancies in meanings to be fully understandable and relevant.