They can carry even a hundred kilos. This is how they make the legendary children’s Tatry 148 in Liberec

Warm and noisy. This is what it looks like inside the Liberec plant, which, in addition to toys, also sends other plastic products to the world, such as food bottles.

2.6 kilos of food-grade plastic are used to produce one 72-centimeter-long model of nettles in the Tatras. In total, the toy consists of 22 parts, including wheel axles. Production and assembly only takes about 10 minutes of pure time.

“Plastic material in the form of balls with the addition of colored pigment is injected into the mold at a temperature of 190 °C,” describes the beginning of the entire process, Novoplast company executive Jiří Vošoust.

Although the resulting products are colored, most of the granulate is white and the pigment, mainly orange and black, is represented by only a few percent.

“Subsequently, the mass cools down and after about sixty seconds it turns into moldings, individual parts of the car. We will then assemble them,” says the company owner.

The machines in it run continuously 24 hours a day, and one machine can produce, for example, about 18,000 black wheels for a toy car per day.

Plastic Tatra was originally produced by the Chemoplast Brno-Maloměřice cooperative, in the 1980s it was taken over by the company PF Chuchelná, but production stopped in the early 1990s.

Dino Toys decided to restore it in 2014. After several years of production in Poland, they completely moved it to Liberec.

“When we tried to continue the production from the 80s, we found out that the original molds were already destroyed, they ended up in the collection. So we had to make new molds. Their production is very expensive, they become part of the machines,” explains Kristýna Miškovská, the executive of the company that holds the license for the toy today.

“The Tatra mask remains more or less the same, it has a strong character that we still stick to. What has changed are a few details, which make the toy significantly safer,” he adds.

For example, there is no longer a separate steering wheel in the cabin, which was a dangerous small part for children. Now it’s pressed.

The body can also carry more cargo. “For large taters, we specify a load capacity of 100 kilograms, this was not the case before, we modified it so that both children and parents could play with them,” explains Václav Miškovský on behalf of the game publisher.

The legendary racing Tatra, which won the Dakar, is on display in the National Technical Museum

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The bet on nostalgia and many parents’ memories of their childhood games with the Tatras in the sandpit paid off. The North Bohemian plant produces 50,000 of them annually, and 35,000 of smaller cars with a length of 30 centimeters. They also travel abroad, mostly going to Germany.

Interest is drawn by the orange classic. In the past, the plastic Tatrovka, inspired by the Tatra T 148 truck from Kopřivnica, was not even produced in other colors. Today, more color combinations are available, including pink-purple or military khaki.

And in the future, maybe children will be racing on the playground with a brand new Tatra, the Dakar one. The manufacturer is collaborating with car racer Aleš Loprais on the form of the “sports” model.

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Tatra won two design awards, one for the hydrogen machine

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