1978 commercial from the UK and Ireland for Aurora Racing Sets

Aurora Plastics Corporation was founded in March, 1950 by engineer Joseph E. Giammarino (1916–1992) and businessman Abe Shikes (1908–1997) in Brooklyn, New York (moving to West Hempstead, Long Island in 1954), as a contract manufacturer of injection molded plastics.

With the hiring in 1952 of salesman John Cuomo (1901–1971), the company began the manufacture of its own line of plastic model kits. These kits were marketed to young hobbyists, as were the kits of rivals Monogram and Revell. Aurora profitably targeted to a younger demographic than their competitors, creating smaller-sized, less detailed models at a lower price point.

Although their first offerings were aircraft kits in a “Famous Fighters” line,^[2] it is with their figure kits that Aurora is most associated and had their biggest success. Following a series of “knights in armor” and historical figures, Aurora acquired a license from Universal Studios to create a line of kits based on Universal monsters, which became the company’s most popular offerings. Aurora’s kit of Frankenstein appeared in 1961, and was followed by twelve other monster figures that were issued and reissued in various versions through the early 1970s. Together with their other licensed models based on characters from movies, TV shows and comic books, Aurora’s figure kits continue to be highly valued by collectors.^[3] Aurora used artist James Bama for some of their box art.

Info gleaned from Wikipedia