Another possiblity, although a real long shot is that Raleigh automated the affixing of the decals, and the square ones worked better, or more could fit on a roll of decals. They did make a lot of bikes at the time, and putting the decals on would have involved lots of labor.
Steve Birmingham Lowell,Ma USA
Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 09:39:20 -0700 (PDT) From: Fred Rafael Rednor <fred_rednor@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [CR]Advice needed - 531 decals on 1974 Raleigh International Message: 4
> This leads to the strange but almost inescapable > conclusion that Reynolds made that decal in two > shapes, square for Raleigh, and rectangular for > everyone else. We know that Schwinn, Jack Taylor > and perhaps others had custom versions of Reynolds > decals and of course there were versions in French... > As I was reading Jerry's comment - the one in which he said "Reynolds made that decal" - I realized that, most likely, none of the Reynolds decals were made by Reynolds. reynolds made metal products and no doubt found a contractor in the transfer/decal/sticker business to produce their emblems.
Perhaps they used different contractors at different times,
which might account for _some_ of the variations in style and
size. At least there are no spelling errors (that I can
detect) on the Reynolds decals - even the French ones. The
same can't be said for the firm that made the "Monthlery"
insignias for Mavic. Consider this: either no one at Mavic
noticed the mistake or, due to the pressures of delivery
schedules and so forth, they decided to use the "imperfect"
emblems. I would not be surprised if this situation sometimes
applied to Reynolds, Raleigh, et al...
Cheers,
Fred Rednor - Arlington, Virginia (USA)