Plastic model kit brands: what the Japanese, European and Chinese makers produce

Walk into a model shop or browse an online one, and the first thing you meet is a wall of brand names. This article sorts them by origin into three sections: Japan, Europe and China. Each section answers two questions only: where the maker comes from, and what its official site says it makes. It does not judge which brand is better or harder to build. How to buy, ship and handle tax is covered in a separate article, "Buying plastic model kits from Japan and Europe".

Founding years and product lines in this article come from each maker's own website, read on 2026-10-13. Where a site gives no founding year, none is given here.

Japan

For several Japanese makers, the year the business started and the year the company was incorporated are different. Tamiya began in 1946 as a timber company, and Tamiya, Inc. was only established in 1984 ¹. Aoshima's roots go back to 1924, and the company was incorporated in 1961 ². When you see "founded in such-and-such a year", first check which of the two it means.

Maker	Location and start	Products listed on the official site
Tamiya	Shizuoka. Opened in May 1946 under the name Tamiya Shoji as a timber company. A wooden model department followed in 1948. In May 1960 it released its first all-plastic kit, a 1/800 battleship Yamato. Tamiya, Inc. was established in 1984 ³¹	Six categories: cars, motorcycles, military, aircraft, ships and dinosaur models. Series include Military Miniature (1/35 and 1/48), 1/32 Aircraft, 1/24 Sports Car and 1/12 Motorcycle ¹
Hasegawa	Yaizu, Shizuoka Prefecture. Started in 1941 ⁴	Aircraft (1:72, 1:48, 1:32, 1:144, 1:200), ships (1:350, 1:450, 1:700 waterline), 1:24 cars and 1:12 motorcycles, plus the Eggplane and Maschinen Krieger series ⁵. The company also handles railway models and specialist tools ⁴
Aoshima (Aoshima Bunka Kyozai)	Shizuoka City. Started in 1924 as the Aoshima Aircraft Research Institute, began making model aircraft in 1932, and was incorporated in 1961 ²	Plastic models and hobby toys ²
Fujimi	Shizuoka City. Established in April 1961 ⁶	Cars (INCH UP series), aircraft (AIR CRAFT), armored vehicles (WA, SWA), ships (SWM) and famous castles ⁶
Kotobukiya	Tachikawa, Tokyo. Established in January 1953 ⁷	Planning, manufacturing and sale of hobby products. Prototypes and design are done in Japan, while production is mainly at overseas factories ⁸. Its kit lines include Frame Arms and Hexa Gear: the first swaps armor over a shared frame, the second is a set of replaceable mechanical units with hexagonal joints ⁹¹⁰
Good Smile Company	Its website has a MODEROID plastic model category ¹¹	For example MODEROID RoboCop, whose product page says "The cyborg police officer, now as a plastic model!" and lists it as a non-scale plastic model kit to assemble ¹¹
Bandai Spirits	The Bandai Hobby Site calls itself the official blog of the developers in the Bandai Spirits hobby division ¹²	The navigation lists three categories: Gunpla, 30 MINUTES LABEL and character plastic models ¹². Gunpla is left for a later Gundam-focused topic

A finished Tamiya 1/48 Brewster Buffalo model standing on a table

*Figure 1: A finished model built from the Tamiya 1/48 Brewster B-339 Buffalo kit. Photo: Wolcott Hartigan, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.*

In Japan, Tamiya also sells kits from the Italian maker Italeri, and its website has a dedicated "Tamiya Italeri Series" section ¹¹³. Hasegawa is the Japanese import agent for Revell (Germany and the US) and for ICM of Ukraine ⁴¹⁴¹⁵. This is the background for the section "Same kit, different box" below.

Europe

Maker	Location and start	Products listed on the official site
Revell (Germany)	The American Revell Inc. was founded by Lewis H. Glaser, and the year given on the German-language history page is 1947. The German subsidiary Revell Plastics GmbH was set up in 1956 in Bielefeld and moved to Bünde the following year. At first it only imported American and British kits. In 1971 it released its first in-house kit, a BMW R75/5 in 1:8 ¹⁶	The history page covers the company's past only and lists no product lines
Airfix (UK)	Started in London in 1939, first making rubber inflatable toys. From 1952 it made plastic kits for the mass market, and the first proper Airfix kit was the Golden Hind, sold at Woolworth's for two shillings. Humbrol bought it in 1986, and Hornby took over in the 2000s (the site gives no exact year) ¹⁷	The history page calls it the oldest British maker of scale plastic kits ¹⁷
Italeri (Italy)	Near Bologna, founded in the early 1960s. The first kit was a 1:72 Fiat G-55, under the brand name Airplast at the time ¹⁸	Aircraft, helicopters, military vehicles, ships, trucks, cars, motorcycles, figures and scenery accessories ¹⁸
Zvezda (Russia)	Founded in 1990 by a group of modeling enthusiasts ¹⁹	Scale plastic kits and board games ¹⁹
Eduard (Czech Republic)	Founded in 1989 in Most, Czechoslovakia, under the company name Eduard Model Accessories. Its first two kits came out in 1993: a 1/72 Sopwith Schneider and a 1/72 Sopwith Baby ²⁰²¹	The "Limited Edition" kits on its site use plastic parts from Eduard itself and from other makers ²⁰
ICM (Ukraine)	ICM Holding is headquartered in Kyiv ²². The site gives no founding year	Aircraft, figures, vehicles, ships, sets and decals, in scales from 1:16 to 1:700 ²³

A finished Airfix 1/72 Spitfire Mk.I model

*Figure 2: A finished model built from the Airfix 1/72 Spitfire Mk.I kit, with decals from another maker. Photo: Andrew Thomas, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.*

A finished Italeri 1/35 eight-wheeled armored car model

*Figure 3: A finished model built from the Italeri 1/35 Sd.Kfz 234/3 kit. Photo: Tomás Del Coro, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.*

China

Maker	Location and start	Products listed on the official site
Trumpeter	The brand belongs to Zhongshan Yatai Electrical Appliance Co., Ltd., with an address in Zhongshan, Guangdong ²⁴. The site gives no founding year	Six product categories: armor, aircraft, ships, cars, other and tools ²⁵
MENG	Founded in 2011. The core company is Rui Ye Century (Shenzhen) Hobby Co., Ltd., in Shenzhen ²⁶	Products grew from the first armed pickup truck to tanks, aircraft, ships, civilian vehicles, figures and consumables, with tools and paints as well ²⁶

A finished Trumpeter 1/35 E-10 tank destroyer model

*Figure 4: A finished model built from the Trumpeter 1/35 E-10 kit. Photo: Tomás Del Coro, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.*

Makers from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan such as Great Wall Hobby, Dragon and Takom are not covered here, because there is no official page to cite for them in this article.

Same kit, different box

It is not unusual in plastic modeling for the same kit to be sold again in another brand's box. Official pages show a few examples:

Tamiya's page for 37195 (Italeri 1/72 EF-111A Raven) says it corresponds to Italeri's 1235, and Italeri's own site has a page for 1235 as well ²⁷²⁸. Each maker has its own page, with a different item number and a different brand on the box.
Italeri's website says it bought the tooling of Supermodel, Protar and ESCI ¹⁸. Tooling can be bought and sold, so one set of molds may appear in boxes of different brands over time.
Eduard's website says its Limited Edition kits use plastic parts from Eduard itself and from other makers ²⁰.
Hasegawa is the Japanese import agent for Revell (Germany and the US) and for ICM ⁴, so Japanese shops can offer these brands through the same channel.

The official pages never state word for word that "the molds are identical". The claims here are limited to two things: both makers' sites list matching numbers, or a maker's site says outright that it uses another maker's plastic parts.

Common pitfalls

Treating "founded" as "incorporated". Aoshima's site gives 1924 for the start and 1961 for incorporation ². Tamiya opened in 1946 and Tamiya, Inc. was established in 1984 ³. The two years describe different events.
Assuming the country of the brand is where the kit is made. Kotobukiya's site says production is mainly at overseas factories ⁸, and on Airfix's site the development manager says they work with manufacturers in India ²⁹.
Assuming the brand on the box is the maker that cut the molds. The same kit can appear in different brands' boxes under different item numbers. Before buying, check the item number on the box, and sometimes look up the original maker's page ²⁷²⁸.
Mixing character kits with scale models when shopping. Kotobukiya's Frame Arms is an original robot kit ⁹, and the MODEROID RoboCop page lists it as non-scale ¹¹. They are bought differently from scale kits such as 1/35 or 1/72.
Choosing by brand alone and ignoring difficulty. Revell's site sorts its kits into several difficulty levels and recommends levels 1 or 2 for beginners ³⁰. The article "Plastic model kits for beginners" gives examples of other makers' entry lines.

Sources

Numbers match the [n] markers in the text. All access dates are 2026-10-13.

Updated 2026-10-13

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Model kit scales explained: what 1/35, 1/48, 1/72 and 1/700 mean

Buying plastic model kits from Japan and Europe: where to buy, limited editions and reissues