FALLER
1.Introduction
The first aircraft kits I built in my youth were from AIRFIX
and the German manfacturer FALLER (see
How it All Began). I remember to have build the Piper Cub in
copper plastic reminiscent to the
Burda
livery, the Messerschmitt Me-262 ( with that clumsy
unrealistically array of 24 underwing rockets), the Junkers
Ju-87 Stuka ( tank buster version G, with that pair of 37
canons slung beneath the wings) the Republic F-84 Thunderjet, with that stunning photograph in the instructon sheet
depicting the choice of external weapons, (see picture below
right) and some more,
which I cannot remember clearly (possibly the Fokker D.R. I
triplane, the Fieseler Storch , the Ju-88 or He-111). These
kits were rather basic and it seems that even im my early
days I had recognized that their accuracy was not good
enough for serious modelling . That still holds today, but
nontheless I rate FALLER aircraft as very interesting from
the collector´s resp. historian´s point of view.
I'm currently (March 2015) updating all pages of this
website. That implies mostly standardizing the format
and eliminating
programming bugs. This is to the expense of updating this
page with new findings.
2. List of FALLER Kits
In my Selection of FALLER Kits I
list kits I remember to have built in my youth as well as
kits I found interesting and bought since 2003.
2.
History
The FALLER company was founded by the brothers Edwin und
Hermann FALLER in Germany in 1946 [4].
They started with HO scale railroad buildings and
accessoires made from wood and cardboard first , later in
the mid 50´s they were made from plastic and also offered as
kits.
According to [1] the first plastic construction kit a model of a 'stone viaduct' first appeared in 1954. At the Nuernberg Toy Fair in 1956 , along with their growing range of railway accessoires, FALER exibited their 1/100 scale plastic kit range. But consider this as a secondary source.
The earliest date of issue given for some kits is 1956
in the website [W 2] . Obviously the dates are validated by catlogs and leaflets. I found a leaflet from 1957 and a catlog from 1958 depicted there.
According to the listing in [2] production ended in
the 1965's.
According to the listing in [5 ] they were at least sold
into the 1970`'s.
There is stated in [2] that
FALLER kits have been available as well in the USA as Europe until the late 60´s - early 70´s when the supply dried up.
The moulds for the Me-109, Me-262, Ju-87, Convair CV-440 and Viscount were scrapped. The rest of the moulds were aquired by Mr. Dahlmann [ 3 ]. He produces and sells these kits packed in new boxes since the mid 1990 under the DAHLMANN brand.
[1] |
Ward (2004 ) |
Ward, Arthur : Classic Kits. London : Collins, 2004
ISBN 0 00 717695 3 |
[2] |
|
Elliott, Kerry : FALLER Aircraft Models in Kit Collector´s
Clearinghouse Vol 32 No. 4 August 2005 pp3 |
[3] |
|
Personal letter from Mr. Dahlmann dated 13.10.2005 |
[4] |
FALLER |
Ueber
uns (about us). There is nothing told about aircraft
kits |
[5] |
Wimmer |
FALLER
/ Dahlmann |
|