When did Schleich start with "Die bunte Welt der Tiere"?

When looking at the catalogues in Torben's website, we notice that not until 1989 they announce many new additions to the successful programme "Die bunte Welt der Tiere".
On Torben's website, there is no image of the 1988 catalogue. On the cover of his earlier catalogues (1984-1987) there is no mention of animal figurines, only TV and comic characters.

We wonder, when exactly did Schleich start producing their first animal figurines that was to become their "World of Animals"?
And, have the animal figurines been released in that series from their very first start?

Would be great if somebody could enlighten us!
(scans from the animal pages in the catalogues earlier than the first collectors one from 1992 would be really wonderful.. )

I am afraid that I don`t know what you mean

As you see [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] they talked about "die bunte Welt" in 1980, but not specificly about the animals.

The first Schleich small animals came in the early 1960`s...before that they made Bendie-animals

Hi Susanne, thanks for taking the trouble to answer!

We think your old catalogue shows the classics / minis, and that is not what we mean.
We mean the series Farm Life, Wild Life and Forest Life.

The oldest catalogue we have is a shop catalogue from 1992. The 'Sammelprospekte' started in 1992, and we have all those. Also one leaflet with only Farm Life, but we are not sure from which year that is (1991 or earlier).
But these three series started earlier than 1992, and we would very much like to view each of the images of all the models from the very first one on.

Websites like Torben's or Tiewe.de mention the year 1984 as production start of animal in these series. We don't have catalogues that old, and we don't know which catalogue first show the series we collect. Buying old catalogues on eBay is very expensive, and we wouldn't want to buy a catalogue that doesn't feature the series we collect yet...

The oldest copyright found on the models in our collection is 1983 (ducks, geese, chickens and a cat), then a cow copyright 1984, a giraffe 1988, moose and donkey 1989, two cows 1990. Furthermore quite some very early ones without copyright imprinted.

As the printed catalogues are the basis of our collection, we would be thrilled to see/know about the earliest one with models from the Farm Life, Wild Life and Forest Life... Hope this explains our earlier post!

Ahhhh ! Now I understand !

Yes. The first Farm animals were launched in 1984, - I am not sure they (all) had a Copyright year. You can trust Torben`s and Tieve`s sites to be completely correct as to when the first ones were launced :

The farm animals 94 : - pig, duck, kid, sitting cat etc, and the brown Godolåhin Arab came in 85.

The first Wild animals in that sence came in 89, but they replaced the "Large Classics" which were sold from `82 - 88. These might also have been "Bunte Welt", - but are clearly designed by another designer.

The first forest life ones, - Squirrel, fox, hare, doe and wild boar - were sold in 91.

There are old books about toys, and catalogues from Exhibitions too. I am sure some of the top-collectors have those or perhaps borrowed them in a library..I am not sure, we don`t have anything of that kind here in Denmark

Thanks again, Susanne!

If anybody would have scans available of the according pages in the catalogues older than 1992, that would be really wonderful!

As we are trying to determine the real colour variants, this is indispensable information for us and we don't have any other way to get that info, so we are hoping this forum can help...

Perhaps somebody would be willing to sell to us photocopies of only the pages featuring the farm life, wild life and forest life models from catalogues 1984 up to and including 1991?
We would be very grateful, indeed!

I only own the 2006, 07, 08,09 and 2010 catalogues so that is too new for you...

There is a place for catalogues in the forum that goes by company too that you can search...
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but you may already have seen this?

Sorry I can't be any more help I hope you can find what you are searching for.

This is the page 11 of the Händler-catalouge from 1984 and the first time that schleich offer the "new" animals. The year you can find on the bottom side of all Schleich animals is always the year before launching because it's the year were the cast were build. So the first animals are marked with 1983 and start in 1984.


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WOW!!!!

The cat is WHITE WITH BLACK

I love the little white duck sitting and it came with a box too!

Ida!!!!!! Thank you so very much for this!!!! Information like this is for us a real treasure indeed!!!!
What a thrill to see the actual very first images of what was to become Farm Life etc.!

This is so very very helpful for our quest to inventory all the real colour variants.
As all the Schleichs are handpainted and thus show differences due to the painters, we are in the process of comparing all the folder photos of each model over the years, and if there are differences in the images then that for us is a true variant. For this, we are looking for all catalogue images ever published.
But as these old catalogues are impossible to get, we are quite desperate and only have a small sparkle of hope left that we will ever be able to compare all folder photos ever, which we so very much would like to be able to do...

But now you have helped us tremendously with this scan, Ida!

To show us scans of the according pages also from the years 1985-1991 here would be more than we dare ask , but do you think it would be possible for us to perhaps buy copies (colour photocopies or scans) of the Farm Life / Wild Life / Forest Life pages from these catalogues from you?
We would be over the moon if you, Ida, or somebody else could help us with this

SUSANNE wrote:

WOW!!!!

The cat is WHITE WITH BLACK

WOW, unbelievable...I share your delight and amazement, Susanne. This is fascinating...are there any collectors here who have this rarity...?