 However, Bakelite is a very brittle plastic, and dropping a radio could easily crack or break the case.Bakelite is a brown-black mouldable thermosetting plastic, and is still used in some products today.In the 1930s some radios were manufactured using Catalin, which is the phenolic resin component of bakelite, with no organic filler added, but nearly all historic bakelite radios are the standard black-brown bakelite color.