Was Palitoy and Grand Toys in direct competition with Mego

[Mikey]

It seems when I look at Mego auctions from sellers in England as well as Canada ... I see BOTH Mego cards and Palitoy or Grand Toys cards.

My question to the peeps of these two countries ......

Were there Mego figures and Palitoy/Grand figures sitting on store shelves next to each-other ?
Edited to add...
I mean the same figures ?
Like Superman, etc

[palitoy]

No, never. Grand rested distribution for the 8" heroes away from parkdale novelty in 1979, Parkdale released everything (save for a few pieces) in US Mego packaging. Grand was Montreal based and created their own bilingual packaging.

Palitoy originally released the WGSH in the UK with US Mego packaging and later created the green cards. Some things they didn't bother with, such as the Batmobile, every Batmobile I've seen come out of the UK is just a normal Mego box.

[English Paul]

On a similar note, I have often wondered how the licenses that Palitoy had were engineered into the final product.

Take for instance, a Superman figure. Would Palitoy approach the same factory that Mego used directly (with Megos permission) and say "we need 5000 units but on this packaging", or did they have to do all the leg work themselves.
The UK Fist Fighters or Space 1999 were Palitoy only, so how would they deal with a scratch built figure? Things like R&D, design and so on - would it have been done in the US or in the UK?

[palitoy]

Well, I think Lion Rock was essentially "for hire" so yeah, they had the license for Space:1999 and got Mego to create a line of figures similiar to the Star Trek series they were already carrying.

Neal Kublan told me that they were responsible for all their own artwork.