[astro1]

I used to know the answer to this one re Bully and Schleich. Unfortunately I lost many of my notes. I seem to remember that there was a regional thing to this, Bully had the rights to sell in Germany and Schleich internationally but can't remember when that stopped. My wife has some info on her website
http://www.astrostreasurechest.net/webs ... index.html go to Smurf list and scroll to Bully

[André]

You´re right Richard.

But that was before 1979.

SCCI newsletter 45 quote a newspaper telling us this: In 1978/79 a lawsuit was brought by Peyo against Bully, to terminate his contract with them to produce smurf figurines. Bully had exclusive sales of the smurfs in West Germany, Scandinavia and in Canada. The first court battle was lost by Peyo.
In the meantime Schleich was continuing production of smurfs in many other european contries, and started with USA, Japan, Australia, South africa etc.
Bullys contract with Peyo expired 31 december 1979. After this Schleich was the sole manufacturer and seller. And worldwide distributor according to the wish of Peyo!!

So from 1980 Schleich was the sole seller, manufacturer and distributor and this goes perfect with the catalogues Stefan showed us. In 1980 Schleich-catalogue all Bullymolds appears and are given Schleichnumbers from 20068 to 20121.
So they must have made some kind of deal still keeping the Bullymarking on all these smurfs for about 5 years. If Schleich started using their own marking on for example these Bully-molds with Schleich articlenumbers 20100 to 20121 in 1980, the Bully marking on them would be extremly rare. Instead they are the most common.

And I am almost certain that they did not use the same molds with both Schleich and Bully markings at the same time. If that was the case then the Schleich marking on the early Bully molds would be common with the Schleich marking also.

And if we look at the catalogues Schleich kept all the Bully smurfs for 5 years before starting removing some from the catalogues.

So I think it Schleich got the right from Bully to use these molds for 4 or 5 years with the Bully-marking before they got them for themselves and could change the molds and remove the Bullymarking and replacing it with Schleich. And also could remove some smurfs that was not selling well or some other reason for removing them. And probably they made some kind of buisness-deal splitting the earnings during these years.

[André]

And another interesting thing is to read in this newsletter.

In 1977/78 Bully opened a new production plant with 20 injection machines in Ronsberg/Bovaria. So my guess is that they started with the printed Bullymarkings and harder material in this new factory.

Before this when they were located in Spraitbach, they used the older marking( like hand-etched and only peyo), older molds( other "shape") and softer material.

??? This is just my guess.

[André]

Regarding the agreement between Bully and Schleich, I know from my posters that Bully sold Schleich-smurfs in Germany when Schleich was not allowed to sell them between 74 and 79.

So they already had a agreement the other way around earlier.

But then I believe Bully removed the Schleich-emblem on the ones they sold in Germany, Scandinavia etc. Because it is only on the pre-1979 Schleichmolds you find the emblem removed. And they are also very common in Germany, at least from what I have seen.