Airfix set to launch Shaun the Sheep model range

Airfix is to release a series of models featuring animated children’s TV character Shaun the Sheep.

The kits, to go on sale in June, will feature Shaun and other characters from the show, including the Naughty Pigs, Timmy the Lamb and sheepdog Bitzer.

Shaun the Sheep first appeared in Aardman Animation’s Wallace and Gromit: A Close Shave. The character proved so popular that it was handed its own stop-motion animation on the BBC and has already launched a range of DVDs, books and toys.

The modelling kits are the latest product of the licensing agreement between Aardman Productions and the Hornby-owned Airfix brand, and follow on from other Wallace and Gromit figures.

Although the models are the same scale and style as other products in Airfix’s Wallace and Gromit series they are branded separately and will form a stand-alone range. Marketing plans for the launch are still being finalised.

The Aardman licensing deal was signed in 1999 and the products have proved very popular – one of the model maker’s biggest sellers is its copy of Wallace and Gromit’s “Anti-pesto” pest control van from the children’s film The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

• Airfix is continuing to develop its traditional range of military models, and is to launch a special collection of fighter planes in June as part of its tie-up with the Imperial War Museum.

The Duxford Collection commemorates the 90th anniversary of the RAF airbase at Duxford in Cambridgeshire this September.

It will feature warplanes with the liveries of the squadrons that used the base, which is now home to the largest aviation museum in the country.