Carnegie Collection date stamp variants revisited - is Bullyland responsible?

[Dinoguy2]

I found a thread from over a decade ago on the old version of the forum discussing early mold variants of the Carnegie Collection, and how the date stamp on the bottom of the model could clue you in to which variant it was: http://dinotoyforum.proboards.com/thread/217/edit-figured-out-history-carnegies

The bottom line is that the earlier, pre-1992 models had greater detail in their molds and slightly different color schemes, and had "Safari LTD Miami, FL" printed or stamped on them. 1992-1996 molds had tweaked sculpts with different paint applications and had only "Safari LTD", no Miami. Looking at my own figures, it's clear that the Miami versions generally have better paint applications and sharper sculpts, and the non-Miami ones generally look worse or at least less detailed in certain ways. The Miami ones also seem to have used thinner paint, and you can even see the multiple layers representing multiple applications - these were painted like real sculptures. The non-Miami ones have paint that looks thicker and more globbed on, probably to get the job done in one pass. In 1996, Safari switched to unpainted plastic and only partially painting, later airbrushing on, the other colors - confusingly, from this point on the "Miami" was put back on the bottom of all figures. These later figures also returned to the much sharper and less blocky sculpts of the original Miami versions, as you can see in this Apatosaurus comparison https://www.dinosaur-toys-collectors-guide.com/carnegie-apatosaurus.html

This is all discussed in the linked thread, but one thing that isn't is why? Dropping Miami seems arbitrary, but less so is why the sculpts changed, and then why they were changed back or changed again, not to make them more accurate but just different. I have a hypothesis: According to this (http://www.dinosaurcollectorsitea.com/CSafari.htm) when Safari first started producing the Carnegie Collection they were still mainly an import business who did not produce their own figures. You could find AAA, Schleich, etc. in their early catalogs (and in fact Schleich itself put out the Carnegie Collection in Germany with Schleich-branded info tags). According to this site, Bullyland actually did the tooling for the first run of Carnegies while Safari got its own operation up and running. I think this must have something to do with all the early confusion around variant molds and paint applications.

Could it be that the early "Miami, FL" versions were the ones tooled by Bullyland? As they are based in Germany, Safari would have send Forest Rogers' sculpt to them for tooling and the creation of molds, then sent the tooling to China for production. China would then send the unpainted vinyl figures back to wherever they were getting painted. This hand painting was usually said to be done at Safari in Florida, but would that have been the case during the first two years of production when Safari was not fully functioning as a toy maker? I think Bullyland may have not only tooled but also painted the first run of Carnegie figures. This could explain why some ultra-rare early variants like the gray Allosaurus are only turning up in Germany.

When Safari took over production, they may have had to re-tool the figures from Forest Rogers' molds, rather than having existing tooling shipped, which maybe would be expensive or interrupt production? If I'm right, their in-house tooling was not as sharp and they did not feel the need to add Miami, FL to the bottom. Then, when it came time to refresh the line in 1996, they simplified the paint process and took the opportunity to switch back to the original tooling.

My other hypothesis was that maybe the non-Miami figures were the Bullyland ones, because they were produced in Germany under contract with Safari, not in Florida. However, these seem to have come second, which would mean Bullyland was just helping pick up Safari's slack using inferior tooling and paint. If true, this would mean the Miami versions and non-Miami versions were being produced and released concurrently. It's hard to tell if this is the case or not.

Any thoughts or help with this arcane topic would be greatly appreciated!

[Dinoguy2]

(Accidentally hit quote instead of edit...)