Blue Cavern

Hi,

I was thinking about the red dots. On kittys cavern and other sites it is written that the factory opened 1982, or ca 1982.

To me it seems it could have been opened a bit later???

Do any of you have any smurfs with Bully-markings and red dot??

Or do you have and of the old Schleichmolds with removed emblem and red dot without any newer marking???

I was able to get some Sri Lanka & red dot variations lately, but don't think there were any Bullys among them...just Schleichs.

I did get a Bully, Portugal from Daniel which made me quite happy

I find it intriguing that we should be able to determine by the markings and paint dots when which factory was used for smurfs....I never even thought about that before

Actually I think the year is approximatly correct. 1982!!

BUT as they write on Kittys cavern the factory initially was helping the Hongkongfactory with painting smurfs for the US market. And also the SCCI letters tells about that these stickers, made in Hongkong-painted in Sri Lanka were common in the US.

In EC though the dot-system were used and no such stickers needed. So I think after the sales peaked in the US in around 1984, they started painting for the european market also. So I don´t think the red dots were used before 1984???

Hi Andre

Sorry i forgot this topic.............
Just had a quick look.
There are 2 Bully smurfs ( according to my file ) with a red dot.
20094 Brainy with book, and 20105 Scottish.

Don't think i can sort with old markings and dots..........

Tintin

Hi Andre

Sorry i forgot this topic.............
Just had a quick look.
There are 2 Bully smurfs ( according to my file ) with a red dot.
20094 Brainy with book, and 20105 Scottish.

Don't think i can sort with old markings and dots..........

Tintin

Interesting Frank!!

I would love to see pictures of those. But these are rare ones, so they probably started with the red dots around the time thay were alloved to change the marking on the Bully molds and that was around 1984??

Hello my friends

I checked my Smurf file. I found only these two Bully Smufs with a red dot (to my large astonishment). Most have yellow or sometimes green dots. I have to look for the others first. Here are pictures of these:

Hi

Nice ones Benny

Sorry my scottish turns out to be a Schleich.
And the 20094 doesn't have a clear marking, well you can see a B and a y, not sure if it's a bad mold or one with erased marking ......

Tintin

Thanks Benny and Frank,

that is great!! Then we can probably date the first red dot smurfs to around the time when thay also started changing to Schleichmarkings. And since these are more rare ones( with Bully and red dot), that would probably tell us that 1984 is a good year.

Actually everything is in some way connected.

It is pretty obvious Schleich was not alloved to remove the Bully markings on these until around 1984. This could actually mean that in 1984 Schleich also could use the W berrie marked ones in Germany. These markings also starts to show up approximatly the same year in Europe.

But I think those rather had to do with the drops in sales in the US in late 1984 and in mid 1985 when Applause stopped with new smurfs??