Hi, Christy...I have no much info...It is my opinion, but it is a welll reasoned opinion...
You know, for example, the yellow variation of shiver, pirate, skater etc etc were sold in England...I suppose it was a common thing: a concrete colour variation for a concrete market. Schleich distributed most of the orange mechanic they made in spanish market (the same for white helmet american football). When they began to deal with the spanish manufacturer to produce smurfs here, the spanish guys used the orange mechanic Schleich distributed in our country, as reference...And this is the origin (always in my opinion) of the mistake of considering them as cnt...I bought one of mine when I was a child, and I bought it at the same store I usually bought smurfs. I have asked recently again to the seller of the old store (it is open still...the seller was a collector time ago and he is called Joaquín too
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), and he said me that he bought smurfs only from ONE distibutor...It has no sense that the same Schleich manufacturer sold smurfs with license and smurfs without license...
If you think carefully, most of the orange mecahnis we have a and we see on ebay are from Spain, but it doesn´t mean they are all cnts. It is true they are all from the spanish markets, but some of them are licensed and some others aren´t. The licensed has the same size than green one, and the same quality, and the markings Wgermany/peyo...the unlicensed are smaller than the regular green one, different quality, and has no markings or a very bad written(hard to read) Schleich emblem and peyo
ONLY MY OPINION from my own and old experience
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Hi Joaquin,
Maybe I can help you here???
The 2 markingversions you describe are both licensed?? The reason they are different are that one was made in Germany ( old Schleichmold with removed emblem) and one in Hongkong ( without overall in mold).
If you look at the emblems on Lias smurfs and these ones, they are placed on the exact same place as on the first HK versions. These also have different size and different material. I don´t have the one with cavitynumber 3 but if anyone has that one I bet it is exactly on the same place on Lia´s orange machanic. Only the HK smurfs have these large "mirrorturned" cavitynumbers I believe???
So both are the molds used by Schleich during the time they just started with the smurfs again.
And if you look at this newsarticle I have shown before from the SCCI letters:
" 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!! "
This tells us Schleich was not allowed to make smurfs in Germany before end of 79 and therefore produced and painted them in other countries.
My guess as yours is that they could have had plans painting smurfs in Spain in 1978 but for some reason choose other countries. Could have something to do with the discussion about that the painted ones from HK used toxic paint in 1978 and therefore they had plans to paint them somewhere else???
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But then got OK to paint them in HK ( no toxic in paint) and dropped this plan???
![Image](http://i961.photobucket.com/albums/ae95/smurfysmurfs/09-07-13/marking1_zps36548453.jpg)