Different Proteus

Indeed, and it does look like the days calculated in the Alfie thread were incorrect. The first letter differentiates which factory they were made in (a lot of stuff was made in "E"). What I'm unsure about is the R suffix, another difference between the two...

On Mattel trains they moved the factory to the end, its the three digit #of day in the year, then the last digit of the year, then the factory code
On Tomy-produced toys, the older letter + one or two digit codes are the month (letters position in the alphabet = number of month in the year) and then the last one or two digits of the year. Later on they sometimes include the day of the month inbetween the month and year, IE C2309 is March 23, 2009.

Turns out I've got two things made in "E" too. The Proteus model I have actually has the label "240E9".
This means that it was made on August 28th, 2009, and so was a BNiB Hank that I have. Which leads me to think that factory "E" made a LOT of stuff. And also leads me to think that the Proteusi that you have Hoser were both made in April, only 5 days apart (so yes you were correct on those dates Dr. Chris). 108 is Thursday, April 17th, 2008, and 103 is Saturday, April 12th, 2008. So I think Hoser you have 2 Original New Friends releases that came in a box with the label on it based on the dates.

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I will say that I remember both my Hank and Proteus came from New York... So could location matter too??

my hit Rheneas was made in the 9th of February of 2009 (code 040E9) also from the E factory

So we got the results
“W” company made them from 2007, R 2008, E Mid 2008 and 2009

Think that might definitely be it D-Real, I'll make a thread of my collection later and it'll be possibly a 10-part series of posts showing the dates everything was produced, only reason it's a 10-parter is due to image limit. So this'll be why it's gonna take so long. But it will be very interesting once it's done so we can track down exactly when certain things like a Proteus or a Trucks and Track Pack were produced.

True!