When was the last time you looked closely at your smurf collection? Closely examining each one, making a note of the position of the head, the position of eyes, the smurf’s body proportions, the list goes on. I did this not so long ago and found that some of my smurfs share the same mould!
I don’t have a problem with this, in my opinion I feel it is rather clever how by adding something to a smurf can change the appearance quite a lot. The more I looked into this, the more I found. Allow me to share some of the these with you.
In the beginning when Schleich started making smurfs back in 1965 all three were made using the same mould. These included #20002 Normal, #20005 Gold and #20010 Prisoner. When Prisoner was produced, it was made using the same basic mould like the other two but they added painted grooves to create stripes and made a slight change to the mouth.
In 1969 when Brainy was first produced, black glasses were added to give it distictive Brainy feel and the mouth was slightly different to the other smurfs so far. Ever since Brainy’s glasses has become a pivitol part of Brainy’s character.
It wasn’t just the early releases of smurfs that this occurred, this practice occurred with some of the smurfs released in 1980’s. A good example of this was #21036 Pumpkin and #20160 Apple. Or #20057 Thirsty with the original release of #20152 Miller.
More recently there has been questions were raised whether or not the same mould was used for Papa Smurf. This was for #20760 Papa Captain released as part of 2014 Pirate series, #20769 Manager Papa Smurf released as part of 2015 Job series and #20777 Jungle Papa Smurf released as part of Jungle series. Though with these the mould used for the body may have been the same or similar but the head is different.
There are plenty of other examples you will find if you close enough. Actually you might be a little surprised how many you will find. It is truly amazing how by adding something like glasses to a smurf figurine can really change its appearance.
Well done to those over the years who have produced the smurf figurines. I love your work!
Keep on Smurfin
Kath B