The story
The company was founded by naval engineer Haroldo Buby Mahler, starting production at his own house in the city of Ranelagh of Greater Buenos Aires in 1956. At the beginning, Mahler (who was a collector of Dinky cars, imported from Europe by then) produced 200 models which he offered with no success until a manager of a toy store bought him 144 cars, a part of giving him a list of potential clients.
The first models were assembled with parts produced by other companies, but Buby soon controlled the total of the production process. By 1964, Buby produced 210,000 models per year, using 2 tons of zamak per month.
In 1968, the company launched the "Mini Buby" series (1:64 scale). The business, named "Miniaturas Buby" was notable for its replica scale models of some of the most renowned automotive brands, commercialised under license of their respective Argentine subsidiaries. At its peak, Buby produced near 1,000 models per day.
As the Mahler's residence could not fulfil the increasing demand for the model cars, the company established a manufacturing plant in Villa General Belgrano in Córdoba Province, where most of the production process was carried out. The 1:43 scale vehicles were sent to Ranelagh, where they were finished and packaged. The Ranelagh plant also assembled some model cars imported from France, after an agreement with Solido, another model manufacturer. Nevertheless, the successive economical crisis in Argentina caused Buby closed its plants in late 1970s.
In 1982, Mahler revived the Buby brand opening a plant in Don Torcuato, a city located 40 km from Buenos Aires. More than 400,000 models were produced there until 1995, when the company closed definitely. Since 1988, most of the models produced were exported.
From Wikipedia’s article on Buby toys, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3