Four Generations of MiG, Five Diecast Models
MiG stands for Mikoyan and Gurevich — Artem Mikoyan ran the design bureau, Mikhail Gurevich did the aerodynamics. Between 1940 and 1982, that bureau went from a piston interceptor that spent most of its war being outflown, to a twin-tail Mach 2 fighter built specifically to hunt F-15s.
We stock five diecast jets that trace the line: one MiG-3, two MiG-15s, a MiG-21 and a MiG-29. This guide walks the four generations in order, with the actual measurements of each model — and the honest part at the end about which ones really match the scale printed on the box.
Everything below sits in our Mikoyan MiG collection, and if you prefer the rival camp, the same shelf has a Sukhoi fighter section and a Russian fighters roundup.
The MiG-3 (1940–1943): the high-altitude fighter that lost its engine
The MiG-3 was built for a war that didn't happen. Its Mikulin AM-35 engine was supercharged for fighting at 5,000–6,000 metres, where planners in 1940 assumed the decisive air battles would be fought. On 22 June 1941 the Luftwaffe came in at treetop height instead, strafing airfields, and the MiG-3's best fighting altitude was empty sky.
Then the engine itself went away. Factory capacity was redirected to the AM-38, which the Il-2 Sturmovik needed far more than a high-altitude interceptor did. Alexander Pokryshkin — one of the Soviet Union's top-scoring aces — scored some of his earliest kills in a MiG-3, but by 1943 the type had been pulled from frontline fighter regiments and handed to air-defence units.
Our 1/72 MiG-3 wears the two-tone green camouflage with a red spinner and red stars, and the white Cyrillic slogan «За партию большевиков» — "For the Party of Bolsheviks" — along the rear fuselage. It sits gear-down on a silver wedge stand: 15.5 cm long, 18 cm wingspan, stand 8 cm tall. The landing gear is moulded fixed, which suits the 1941-regiment look better than a flight stand would.
The MiG-15 (1947–): the jet that put "MiG Alley" on the map
First flight on 30 December 1947. When MiG-15s appeared over Korea in November 1950, they out-climbed and out-turned everything the UN forces had on the field, and for a few weeks the air-war map had to be redrawn. The duels with the F-86 Sabre that followed, in the northwest corner of the peninsula along the Yalu River, gave the world the term MiG Alley — and the first large-scale jet-vs-jet air war. Counting licensed Czech, Polish and other copies, somewhere north of 15,000 MiG-15s were built, which makes it one of the most-produced jet fighters in history.
We carry it in two finishes, both 14.5 cm long with a 14.5 cm wingspan:
The first is bare silver, nose number 384, with a red lightning bolt slashed across the tail and red stars on the fuselage and wings — Soviet markings, mounted on a black swooping stand. See the 1/72 MiG-15 in silver →
The second runs green-brown-tan camouflage, nose number 1990 in red, light-blue drop tanks under the wings, and a North Korean roundel on the fuselage. Below the windscreen there's a cluster of small red stars — the practice of painting one per confirmed kill. We couldn't trace which airframe it copies, so we won't invent a pilot for it. This one sits gear-down on a silver wedge stand, like the MiG-3.
See the 1/72 MiG-15 in Korean War camouflage →
The MiG-21 (1955–): the Mach 2 taxi nobody could retire
Roughly 11,000 MiG-21s were built — about twice the production run of the F-4 Phantom, the closest thing the West had to it. A 1950s design that was still being delivered new in the 1980s, flown by more than fifty air forces, and still appearing in exercises in the 2020s. Its NATO reporting name was Fishbed; the pilots who flew it had other opinions, most of them about fuel.
Our 1/72 MiG-21 carries the three-tone green-brown-tan camouflage, R-60-style missiles and drop tanks on the pylons, and a silver swoop stand. It's also the heavyweight of the family at 363 grams — a third more than the MiG-3 — which is what happens when you build a Mach 2 airframe out of solid diecast.
One buyer put it better than we could:
"This mig 21 bis diecast has really nice details and panel lines for the money even the drop tanks and r60m's (missiles) look really nicely done and well detailed definitely worth it if you want a nice representation of mig 21bis in your collection" — The Cannibal cadaver, five stars
The MiG-29 (1977–): built to answer the F-15
By the mid-1970s the US Air Force had the F-15 and the F-16, and the USSR needed an answer on both counts. The result first flew on 6 October 1977 and entered front-line service in 1982: twin tails, huge engines, NATO called it Fulcrum. It was also the first Soviet fighter fielded with a helmet-mounted sight, letting the pilot lock a missile onto whatever his head was pointed at — a trick Western types didn't match for years.
Our 1/100 Fulcrum has the two-tone green camouflage, white tail number 51, a shark mouth under the nose, missiles and bombs on the pylons, and a black stand printed "MiG-29 Fulcrum 1/100". At 86 grams it's the lightest of the four — gear-up, flight-stand pose, the opposite of the MiG-3's wheels-down sitting look.
And because honesty works both ways, here's the review worth reading before you order one — a buyer named Kbs, five stars: "My son wanted jet models, but not model-building kits. This was perfect." His one caveat: "buyers should know it comes from China, so it takes longer to arrive." Fair. We ship from Shenzhen, and trans-Pacific parcels take their time.
The scale, honestly
Strict scale means real length divided by the scale number. The MiG-3 is 8.25 metres long in real life, so true 1/72 is 11.5 centimetres — our model runs 15.5, about a third oversized. Wingspan tells the same story (18 cm against a strict 14). We'd call it display scale: it reads fine next to other 1/72 jets, but if you're lining up precision scales, know what you're getting.
The two MiG-15s are the opposite: at 14.5 cm they land within a centimetre of strict 1/72, which makes them the pick if proportion matters to you. The MiG-29 is labelled 1/100; a real Fulcrum is 17.3 metres, so strict scale would be 17.3 centimetres.
If the whole 1/72-versus-1/100 question is new territory, we wrote a longer scale guide that covers the arithmetic. For the other side of the Cold War fence, we've covered the Su-57 Felon and China's J-20 — both descendants of the same flanker-line thinking the MiG-29 started.
Shelf notes before you go
If you're mixing generations on one shelf, put the MiG-3 at the back. Its 18-centimetre wingspan overhangs everything else's footprint, and a propeller plane hidden behind three jets reads as clutter rather than chronology. Front row: the two MiG-15s. Wheel-down and flight-pose standing side by side makes the 1940-to-1950 jump visible without a single label card.
We're writing per-type deep dives next — the MiG-15 first, since the Korean War story deserves more than a paragraph here. When they're up, this guide will link to them, and each one will link back here.
