
I find so much joy in collecting Smurfs. Whether it is discovery a new colour or marking variation or reading about other collectors adventures, the happiness it brings me is hard to explain to those who don’t collect. But this week, I was asked for an opinion on a particular Smurf item that before now I knew nothing about.
It started like this
“I wanted to ask…. Do you know anything about the playset #7801? It’s basically the swinging Smurf with the pen set tree stump #53040, attached to the tree from the Trapeze Super Smurf #40237”.
I confessed, I had never heard of this playset #7801 but I would be happy to look into it further and get back to them. I was able to find a picture of the playset in the Der Schlumpf Katalog IV, published in 2003. The picture was exactly as how the playset was described to me, but didn’t look quite right. However, I could not locate any picture of the playset in old catalogues by Schleich or Wallace Berrie.
The Swinging Smurf used is wearing his customary white trousers and hat while sitting on a swing.
The tree stump from the Trapeze Super Smurf is connected by two parts. The overhanging branch has two yellow rope like rings that are part of the mould that connect to the swing.
But this for me, this is where it looks not quite right as the swing looks like it is being stretched out so it can connect. Whereas the swing on the pen set tree stump is more straight.
The other odd thing I found was in the 1983 Wallace Berrie catalogue showing Trapeze for the first time. The trapeze part is not part of the mould but connected by yellow cotton.
My conclusion
Potentially this could have been a Wallace Berrie Super Smurf that was never officially released, given its article number #7801 only has four digits. Schleich’s article numbers were generally five digits. However I feel it was a creative collector who decided two combine two incomplete playsets to make one complete playset.
What are your thoughts?
Keep on Smurfin
Kath B