Before Ekco started to produce these sets, bakelite was still a rather embryonic product. Having been invented in 1909 in by Dr. Leo Bakeland, this early plastic had seen use in small products, such as jewelery and small insulated electrical components, but the Ekco sets that used this material pioneered the use of the material in such large forms. Nowadays, where large plastic items are commonplace, such a feat may seem unremarkable, but this application of plastics technology was unprecedented at the time.

The roots of these sets dates back to the turn of the 1930s, when E. K. Cole, a company that had only been making sets for a short time, took the descision to experiment with plastic-bodied sets to free themselves from the labour-intensive process of having to construct or order wooden bodies for their sets, which represented a large portion of the manufacturing cost of the devices. The earliest of these sets looked little different to the predominent wooden sets of the era, but as manufacture continued, the unique properties of plastic were increasingly utilised in their design, which led to sets whose appearance would have been impossible to recreate in natural materials.

By 1934, Ekco was soliciting leading designers and architects of the day, challenging them to produce new forms for their radio sets using bakelite, and two of the most notable were Wells Coates (responsible for Embassy Court) and Serge Chermayeff, who worked on the De La Warr Pavilion, as well as the radio set on this page, the Ekco ADT 95. This set, whilst not as flamboyant as the circular sets styled by Wells Coates, is still a distinctive machine. The gentle curves of the bakelite casing is reminiscent of contemporary modern architecture, with few hard angles anywhere on the set. The fragile nature of the bakelite is strengthened with wooden reinforcing panels on the inside of the cabinet, needed as the internal workings of this set are so heavy. Incidentally, this set was marketed as being "transportable" - the built in aerial meant that it could be used anywhere in the home with a power point. It is not portable in the modern sense though, due to the weight and bulk of the machine. As the aerial was not adjustable from the outside, the whole set is mounted on a smoothly operating turntable, so that the set could be rotated in order to receive the strongest signal possible.

Ekco's moment of glory was short-lived however, with few of their post-war sets being as collectable as these 1930s models, and the company name had vanished from electronic equipment by the 1970s. But the bakelite sets are strongly indicative of their period, and very desirable today.