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??