The Maglite Solitaire debuted in 1988 as a single AAA light designed so that women could carry it easily in a purse. Maglite developed and released an AAA Mini Maglite earlier that year but Tony Maglica's partner Claire pushed the company to produce a light geared more towards women and less towards industry and law enforcement. By this time Maglite's sales were changing from predominantly law enforcement to mostly civilian and trades.
Originally the light was to be called a Marquis. A small run of Marquis were produced during May of 1988 and were sent to retailers. However even before the light was issued the name was very unpopular with Maglite's marketing team as there were several other products already named Marquis. From the beginning Maglite's marketing team wanted the light to be called the Solitaire but the Marquis name was put on the light at insistence of Claire.
When the lights reached retailers the same complaints were received about other products with the same name. Maglite's marketing team won this argument and the light was renamed the Solitaire starting in July of 1988. Early Solitaires, like the one below, carry the TM designation after Solitaire. The registered trademark was not approved until March of 1989 and the R with a circle was then placed after Solitaire. The TM Solitaires were only produced for 8 months. There were a couple more bezel styles and the Panther logo was introduced onto the light in 1992. LEDs came later.
A story being circulated online is that Maglite could not use the Marquis name because of a trademark disputes. I have found nothing to support this. In fact, the Marquis trademark was approved in March 1989 and lapsed in 1995 due to dis-use because the light was no longer being produced.
Technical differences are very minor throughout the production run of the Marquis and Solitaire. Early on only black and silver were available. Now many colors are available. The Mfg. by Mag Instrument wording also changed a few times with different abbreviations for California used and then an eventual switch to a single line of text.
Maglite Marquis are one of the rarest Maglites. I only personally know of a handful that exist, mostly all in black and 1 silver. Production lasted only 1 month and most folks likely disposed of the lights if the batteries leaked inside of them or after they were carried for a number of years so it's not likely many more are out there. I was lucky enough to come across 2 in my years of collecting. One was acquired from another collector who purchased it from the original owner in the UK. The UK owner bought it at a department store on a business trip to California and then stored it without batteries in a drawer before selling it a few years ago. The second I found with a lot of lights that I bought from an estate sale and also appears unused. Like many doubles I hope to trade it for a rare light that I don't have yet.
Shown below are my Marquis and TM bezel Solitaire. These are two of the smallest and rarest lights in my collection. The Marquis is on the top and the Solitaire is on the bottom. These early Solitaires and Marquis also came with a Mag Instrument token which is shown below too.
