LS aircraft kits will be familiar to veteran modellers of a certain age from when they first appeared as 1/75 scale kits from Japan in the 1960s, and are still available to them and to new generations of modellers under the Arii Microace brand to this day. Back in the 1960s they presented a little more finesse than the contemporary Aoshima kits and indeed a finesse in the context of the time which gave several of their ‘only kits in town’ an impressive longevity when it came to certain Japanese aircraft types. For example their Ki-67 kits ruled that roost from 1966 until the Hasegawa kit of the type was released in 1999.
The company was founded in 1946 by Kan’ichi Kimura as the Sunlight Science Model Factory and with ‘SL’ adopted as a monogrammed logo from 1954, misperceived as ‘LS’ because the ‘L’ was larger than the ‘S’. Mr Kimura, who in 2006 at the age of 90 received an Aviation Age Award from the Japanese Aeronautical Association, had worked as a designer for Maeda Seisakusho, manufacturing gliders at Fukuoka before the war and afterwards established his own company to produce educational teaching materials including wood and paper aircraft. When the first miniature electric motors of Mabuchi type became available in 1954 the company, then based at Gifu as the Kimura Gliding Research Institute, began produced motorised ship models in addition to aircraft. The first plastic aircraft kit in their 1/75 series was the D4Y2 Model 12 Suisei ‘Judy’ (shown as the heading image above) released in December 1961 but was rapidly discontinued the following year when the company went out of business due to the cost of moving from wood and paper to plastic injection moulding. With regeneration as エルエス (Eruesu – LS) in July 1964 the company released six ground breaking 1/75 injection moulded aircraft kits including their original ‘Judy’ in a box of revised design but with the same box art (as shown below).
The ‘Judy’ then became kit No.3 in the ‘Masterpiece Machine’ series which consisted of:-
- No.1 Hayabusa Type 1
- No.2 Hayabusa Type 2
- No.3 Comet Carrier Bomber Type 12
- No.4 Type 2 Seaplane Fighter
- No.5 Zero Fighter Type 21
- No.6 Zero Fighter Type 52
The No.1 Hayabusa 1 kit was rather different to the No.2 kit, being heavily rivetted and with moveable flying surfaces compromising scale fidelity. The No.2 Hayabusa 2 kit was more cleanly moulded without rivets and with only the prop, canopy and ailerons being movable, but both kits had engraved Hinomaru locations. They are now considered crude by modern standards but in fact were more faithful representations of Hayabusa’s slender shape than the 1/72 Revell kit released the same year. The cowlings are cylindrical but perhaps the worst parts are the canopies which appear under scale even for 1/75th. More about the two LS Hayabusa and other initial kits in a future article.
The ‘Judy’ was identical to the original kit, moulded in dark green plastic with crewmen moulded to their seats à la Revell box-scale style, with opening bomb bay doors and a loose bomb which was supposed to drop as they were opened. The propeller was designed to rotate and the main undercarriage to retract but there were no other moving parts. It had refined surface detail with engraved panel lines, a presentation only spoilt by engraved positions for the fuselage and wing Hinomaru. The support for the optical sight was moulded integrally with the fuselage halves but no separate sight was provided and the engine intake, although open, had no internal detail. A very clear and crisply moulded single piece canopy with clearly delineated raised frames was included, together with a clear stand bearing the LS logo and ‘Made in Japan’ in English. The decal sheet in this release (shown below) was glossy, and although the white borders to the Hinomaru were not consistently in register, it provided yellow leading edge strips, undercarriage warning bands and the white tail code with twin yellow tail bands for ヨ-201 – Yo(kosuka)-201. It also had a decal for the stand in the form of a yellow star on a white circle with the four red characters for ‘Suisei Kanbaku’ (Comet Carrier Bomber) presented two on two.
The only English on the box was ‘1/75 Series’ and ‘Suisei (Judy)’ whilst the instructions on a single sheet (shown below) were entirely in Japanese.
The next release of kit No.3 was in 1968 with a new design of box and presenting as 1/72 scale with fresh box art by T Ogawa (as shown above) and perhaps geared more towards export. Indeed my example still has a price sticker for Argyle Models of 65p (13 shillings in old money!) so sold post-1971. The kit, which was also numbered as 103:100, and instruction sheet were unchanged, but the stand was now a curious affair in white plastic which seemed to be designed to accommodate motorisation, although there was no reference to this in the kit itself. An insert sheet in English was included (shown below), plus a tiny metal tube of glue and the decal sheet with same ヨ-201 option was enhanced with two sets of alternative yellow numerals from 0 to 9 and the yellow Katakana unit codes カヤ (KaYa for Kanoya) and タイ (TaI for Tainan).
In 1965 these six LS kits were being sold for 6/11d by importers like BMW in Wimbledon – their advertisement in the February issue of Flying Review International shown below – together with imported 1/50 Marusan kits, relatively expensive exotica at 12/6d and18/6d. The wording of the advertisement suggests that the LS kits sold out quickly. I recall Aoshima kits in a local hobby shop around that time but cannot recall seeing LS kits sold there – that might be because I couldn’t afford them on 2/6d weekly pocket money!
By circa 1970 the LS Judy kit had come down in price in UK to 5/11, its box art featuring in another BMW advertisement, this time in Aircraft Illustrated Extra No.4 (shown above). In 1972 the kit was re-released in a completely revised form which will be explored further on Part 2.
To be continued . . .
Image credit: LS box art, etc., © LS Co., Ltd © 1961, 1964 &1968; Magazine advertisements © 1965 BMW Models and Flying Review International (Purnell & Sons Ltd) and © circa 1970 BMW Models and Aircraft Illustrated Extra (Ian Allan Ltd)
