Blue Cavern

There is one thing I have not told you and I wanted to share my thoughts regarding this with you. It is about the old Schleichmolds. Who had these between 1977 and 1979.

As you see on these Bully catalogues( posters from 1975 and 1977) Bully sold these Schleichsmurfs then.

If you check the 1975 bullyposter you see that in 1975 Bully sold all the 23 smurfs Schleich had made then. And as told you before it is only on these 23 molds we can find the removed Schleichemblem. So it must have been Bully who removed the emblem when they started making these because Schleich did not make any smurfs these years. You also see the old Schleichform on both Astro and Smurfette so Bully got these 2 also.

In 1977 Bully had their own versions of Astro and Smurfette and sold them instead.

When Schleich started making smurfs again in 1977 after they stopped 1972, Bully sold these smurfs also ( see 1977 poster, Bully sold 5 new Schleichsmurfs in 1977, (20023-20027) but with other articlenumbers).

If we check the Schleich catalogue from 1979 we see that Schleich did not sell any Bullysmurfs.

So it seems only Bully sold the Schleichsmurfs. Probably because this was the only way for Schleich to sell smurfs in Germany since Bully had the license from Peyo for Germany between 1974-1979.

But who made these old Schleichsmurf between 1977 and 1979. Bully made them to 1977, but when Schleich started again in 1977 most likely wanted these back and Schleich have them all in their catalogue from 1979.

So the question is did Bully still made these smurfs all the way to 1979 for both companies??? Or did Schleich get these molds back in 1977 and made them themselves???

For me the most likely thing is that Schleich got them back already in 1977 since they made new smurfs then. But we also know that they did not put the Schleichemblem back on these so maybe Bully allowed them to use them but not put the marking back since they also wanted to and did sell them after 1977??

Andre, do you have any theories why Bully just removed the Schleich emblem but never put their "Bully" marking on those smurfs? Obviously they got the license to sell them, so it doesn't make sense to me not to put their name on them

I don´t know. But I think it has do with that they didn´t make these molds. Just used the molds and sold the smurfs. And they sold these in a separate articlenumberserie. As you see on the posters they numbered their own Bullymade molds with one articlenumberserie and the Schleichmade molds in another serie.

And later when Schleich was making smurfs in 1977 and made new ones. When Bully sold these they didn´t remove the emblem. So if Schleich had made smurfs in 1974/75 they would probably not have removed the Schleichemblem.

I think all of these things are depending on the type of agrement you make when the molds switch owners. The only thing we know are the facts. And the facts we have are the markings, posters, catalogues, newsadds ( like the peyo license issue with Bully), etc.

And off course the familyconnection between the companies and the closeness( neighbours) between these 2 companies could have a lot to do with how these agreements were made.

It is the same with the fact that Schleich sold the Bullymolds for almost 4 years with Bullymarking!! This also sounds strange for everyone, but is a almost 100% fact if you check the markings. Nothing else is possible. Unless anyone can explain why the Bullytrumpetplayer was sold for 5 years by Schleich( 1980-1984) but no smurf with Schleichmarking can be found!! It is the same with all the Bullymolds!! And as I told you before Schleich made changes on some of the molds but still marked them with Bully? So Bully must have had the rights for these molds for 4 to 5 years but Schleich made them and off course made a lot of money selling them!!

Probably the same with the old Schleichmolds when Bully got them, Schleich had the rights of these molds. But Bully could oviously remove the marking. And maybe Bully did not want Schleich to do the same with their molds and therefore not removing the Bullymarking was part of the agrement in 1980 when Schleich got all the Bullymolds??