VEB Plasticart

VEB Plasticart was a model and toy manufacturer established in 1958 in Zschopau, East Germany.

VEB Plasticart produced around 40 different kits and a few games (e.g. the mancala game "Badari") made of plastic. Most kits were static models and used scale 1/100 for airliners, 1/50 and later 1/72 for smaller aircraft. They also produced a model of the Soviet spaceship Vostok (scaled 1/25) and the Energia rocket with the Soviet space shuttle Buran (1/288). Many of them are today valued collector items.

VEB Plasticart was established in 1958 in Zschopau, East Germany. VEB (Volkseigener Betrieb) was a Communist-era designation, meaning "company owned by the people". The company was called KVZ from 1958-1969, MPKAB from 1969-1973, VEB Plasticart Zschopau from 1973-1989 and Mastermodell GmbH from 1989-1991. After a two-years break the company was sold in 1993 by the German Treuhand (an organization which privatized state owned enterprises of the GDR) to Manfred Wader. It is today called Plasticart. In 1993 the company had only 37 workers left. A new factory was constructed in Elterlein, Saxony, and now the company counts over 70 workers. They no longer make kits, but playthings for toddlers. In late 2012 German company Reifra has resumed production of the some former Plasticalt model kits.

The "VEB" title was applied to a range of small semi-autonomous businesses in the GDR that made goods especially for export. The GDR needed to export as much as possible to earn foreign "hard" currency as its own "soft" Ostmark was not freely convertible and could only be obtained and used within the GDR. Consequently, VEB Plasticart was able to sell cheap, but well designed, plastic construction kits to the Western countries in exchange for much-needed Western currencies.

The factory was located in August-Bebel Strasse 2, 936 Zschopau, German Democratic Republic.

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