1960: The foundation for Roco was laid by Mr. and Mrs. Rössler when Heinz Rössler founded the company under his own name. The means were limited, but the vision grand ...

1960: the economy was booming, there was a striving and an optimism that is difficult to describe. TV was young, a new kind of wild and wonderful music Rock'n Roll was making a name for itself, the conquest of space was just beginning, and the relatively new material, plastic, was coming into its own.

And it was this material that fired Heinz Rößler's imagination. Plastic injection moulding provided the means for far more detailed and economical models than die-cast metal could hope to achieve.

After putting together a team of highly skilled experts, military models were produced — much more finely detailed models than had ever been seen before. Especially the US market, where demand for such models was high, proved a great success. So much so that an American business partner wrote, "Deliver as much as you can produce ..."

A few years after the successful introduction of the MINITANKS models, Roco began producing railway models.

And so, step by step, the programme grew. Today, Roco is the world's largest manufacturer of H0 and N scale models of military vehicles. One of the most important factors in this development were innovations that changed the model railway world.

On October 1, 2007, Roco’s successor company, Modelleisenbahn GmbH assigns the worldwide distribution of Minitanks to Herpa Miniaturmodelle GmbH and therefore ensures the continuance of that traditional brand.