Actually, Moulinex as it was went under in 2001. You can read all about the path of Moulinex in my link. Now owned by Group SEB, they exist now only as a name, and a name which -in the UK at least- seems to come and go at will. In recent times, we didn't see the word "Moulinex" for a good deal of years, yet it is creeping back in again at the moment.
As far as the UK went, Moulinex was one of the cheapest brands of small appliances, with quality that varied considerably, from poor through to adequate, and in the case of some of their earliest food processors, superb. Possibly due to the low price, Moulinex was one of the most popular brands sold in the UK, and I think possibly were the market leaders in electric knives.
Many Moulinex appliances failed to carry the BEAB (British Electrotechnical Approvals Board )label of seal of safety & performance. This approval was awarded by the Electricity Council, for UK appliances, and without it the appliances could not be sold in the UK Electricity Board showrooms. However, appliances could still be sold through other retailers, and the absence of such approval does not automatically indicate that it failed the the BEAB tests as it may have been the case that the appliance was in fact never put forward for approval if it was never intended to be sold by the Electricity Boards. Having said that, I do have it in the back of my mind that some of the earliest Moulinex appliances sold in the UK did not meet BEAB approval on safety grounds.
Moulinex sold vacuum cleaners in the UK throughout the 1970's, picking up momentum considerably after 1979 when their feature-packed hard-bag uprights like in the photos here went on sale. Certainly for the UK, Moulinex carried quite a neat range of cleaners for many years, before stopping the uprights around 1987 and continuing with just one or two cheap cylinders until the very early 1990's. Towards the end of the 1990's, Moulinex brought out a whole range of cylinder cleaners, all of which were very reasonably priced, and in the case of the top-end models were actually very good quality.
Moulinex suffered in the way that many manufacturers of all sorts of goods have, in as much as even cheaper imports took their market share, although it seems also that Moulinex didn't do itself any favours when it bought the Krups brand (see my link).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moulinex
