LONDON (Reuters) — Model train maker Hornby sped to the rescue of Airfix model planes on Friday, buying the brand from its stricken owner in a $2.6 million ($5 million) deal that unites two of Britain’s best known toymakers.Hornby, which also makes Scalextric cars, said it planned to launch a new range of Airfix’s plastic tanks, planes and ships adapted for a younger generation with a shorter attention span than its parents and more interest in cartoon characters.

“We wouldn’t rule anything out. At the younger end we might produce kits which are already painted, already clipped together,” Hornby chief executive Frank Martin told Reuters.

“Instead of working on something for a week, children can work on something for an afternoon. If that’s what they want, we can give it to them,” he said in a telephone interview.

“We will look at character licensing and film character-related products in the short term,” Martin added.

Hornby said it was buying several assets from the administrators of toymaker Humbrol, including Humbrol paints as well as Airfix.

Airfix models, lovingly put together by children in the 1960s and 1970s, have suffered a decline in popularity in recent years as young people have become more interested in computer games and television than assembling miniature war planes, sailing ships and classic cars. Hornby said it hoped to invest $350,000 in developing Airfix kits and launch a new range of products by 2008. It said it would not desert products for the brand’s older fans either.

“Many of them sell year-in, year-out because they are iconic subject matter,” Martin said.

Humbrol, which launched the Airfix Spitfire fighter plane in 1955, fired all its employees when it went into administration in August. Hornby, whose shares have soared five-fold in the past five years, expects to employ a small number of ex-Humbrol staff.

Hornby also announced a 43 percent drop in pre-tax profit to $1.42 million for the six months to September 30, hitting its shares. On Friday, the shares were down 5.5 percent at 235 pence, off an earlier low of 222 pence and valuing Hornby at about $89 million.

“The headline results make for disappointing reading, particularly after a strong end to the previous year,” Bridgewell Securities’ Iain Daly wrote in a research note. First-half revenues fell to $17.9 million from $18.5 million, hit by this summer’s soccer World Cup and a slowdown in consumer spending growth, but Hornby said it was confident of an improvement in the second half.