Almost forgot to return to this topic.
Although it was loosely discussed in this thread (mentioned in the OP) the precise method is indeed to remove the ‘META’ package ‘manjaro-pulse’ but not the packages it installed. As a ‘META’ package it simply grouped together a bunch of other packages for install.
sudo pacman -R manjaro-pulse # no 's', don't uninstall the
#. orphaned packages that it
#. suggested.
sudo pacman -Rs pulseaudio-bluetooth # with 's', and orphaned. This
#. will remove the 'bluez'
#. package also.
If the ‘obexd’ package is still running you can kill it with:
kill -9 $(pidof obexd)
It should not appear again at startup.
Done. 