One of the biggest toy makers from former Yugoslavia was based in Slovenia: Mehanotehnika Izola, founded in 1952, did not only manufacture model railways, learning toys, toy telephones and typewriters, but also, in the 1970s and 1980s, plastic toy cars in various scales that were often copies of Western European products, e.g. by Schuco from Germany or Politoys and Fabian from Italy. Furthermore, Mehanotehnika Izola manufactured copies of Norev diecast models from the "Mini Jet" series in about 1/66th scale. In 1990, the company was renamed to Mehano. It later concentrated its output on model railways and electronic learning toys. In 2003, Hongwell Cararama released a 1/43rd scale diecast model of the Zastava 750 whose baseplate bears, besides the Hongwell logo, also the name of a toy distributor from Slovenia, Hribar & Otroci. In fact, several versions of this model were marketed under the name of Hribar & Otroci in the countries of former Yugoslavia, including a police car, a road service vehicle and a car advertizing Cockta, a Slovenian soft drink. Dražen Bjelić, a Croatian model maker, released several 1/87th scale resin handbuilt models of vehicles from former Yugoslavia in the 2000s, including TAM trucks as built in Maribor. A TAM 5500 fire engine from 1974 has been released as a 1/72nd scale diecast model in partworks by Atlas and De Agostini. The French manufacturer Original Miniatures made a 1/43rd scale resin handbuilt model of a stretched Citroën XM with six doors as built by the Slovenian coachbuilder EME in the 1990s.
Slovenia