Frog is for Krugozor

Actually it means Flies Right Off [the] Grownd! This is definitely a convenient hook to hang stuff on; I've had the scans hanging around in Picasa for nearly two years while I wondered what to do with them, and the black-background'ed image is from nearly a year ago, from the photo-shoot of the parcel Chris Smith sent to the Blog before Christmas last, while the other shot is from a more recent donation also from Chris, they allowing me to get the others off the laptop whilst covering another Russian brand in passing, with - probably - British figures!

Not particularly rare, a Google-image search provides enough pictures of sets and part sets of the Frog F139 - RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institute) Oakley-class North Sea Lifeboat to work out that the kit seems to contain two of the plain, arms-down, standing poses and one coxswain/helmsman ('driver'!), advertised at 1:48th, they are 40mm figures and manufactured in 'kit' styrene.

Most of Frog's mould bank 'went East' at the end of the 1970's, where they have been rather passed around, most starting life with the Soviet-era Novo, as the Lifeboat did, only to turn-up in various colours, this tool is currenyly held by Alanger. However for a while there was a domestic issue of the model by Krugozor.

Literally translated (there's no direct translation) the larger text gives '<<Saver/Rescuee>> boat' where boat is the small word above the longer one. Obviously this is 'lifeboat' in English and a kit history is to be found here, albeit missing the Krugozor section!

The small banner - bottom right - translates as 'assembly model' or as we might say in the West/in English "model-kit".

Moscow Toy Tactory «Krugozor»

Krugozor was a large combine created in the early-1970's and formalised in 1975, by bringing together under a central management structure the assets of approximately 20 other factors in the greater Moscow region, including at least two of the Progress factories (Michurinsky plant and Moscow-proper), the 'Kid' factory (Malysh), the Moscow Doll Factory, the No.1 Soft Toy Factory (I kid you not) and others - probably including Horizon (Gorizont ) and Moscow Clockwork (Moskovskiy mekhanicheskoy).

A complication being that most of them continued to use their old logo's, now as 'brand-marks' of Krugozor rather than the former 'factory brands'! But the [two-kids] logo of Krugozor-proper slowly became dominant and is often found on the later stuff which is more likely to have survived with packaging.

From around 1973 through to about 1988, the various assets were brought together on one site, to create 'Europe's largest toy factory', and following the upheavals of 1989-91 it was transferred to private ownership where it continued to trade for some time, being a major supplier to the Mir department stores until the mid-2010's. The site is now a commercial park and office complex.

If you're familiar with the earlier versions of the kit, you will have recognised the artwork above as being a cartoon version of the Novo iteration's box-art and it would appear that the transfer sheet was replaced by card cut-outs on the bottom of the box, which was of the 'Airfix figure' design, opening both ends rather than the more standard lift-off lid type of model kit box.

Instructions for the placing of the cards!

Many thanks to Chris for the two lots of figures, it's another ticked-box here. A more detailed history of Krugozor - than the thumbnail above - can be found here and it is that which I used for producing this overview.

And; while I'm at it, here's F.R.O.G. on Wikipedia.