Originally posted by chickentender Yes, that's what I meant. Likely already fit the bill for their M lineup intentions, seeing as it is so compact.
They actually carried over quite a number of K lenses into the M era in the USA catalog.
The MX manual lists 12 SMC primes (mostly ultra-wide and wide, plus K50/1.2 and K200/2.5), two K specialty lenses, the two reflexes and two K zooms. The MX manual shows 18 M primes, 7 M zooms and 2 M Macros.
The early M lenses manual actually has 18 K-Series primes and only 8 M primes. I didn't count the others, but there was no overlap. The mid M lens manual continues most of those K lenses, but a complete complement of M's.
I suspect much of that was a matter of running down inventory, and Japan may have been very different.