When Bully started making smurfs around 1974 something unexpectedly happened which changed the way we now collect smurfs. Bully introduced us to the world of colour variations.
For those of you who do not know, Schleich was manufacturing smurfs between 1965 to around 1974 when they lost licence to make smurfs. Bully was then given the rights to manufacture smurfs and as part of the agreement Schleich had to hand over the smurfs that had previously made. This was around 22 smurfs.
What I find really interesting about this is that Bully gradually changed the paint colours used on smurfs. For some this was changing the colour not just once but twice.
There are a number of smurfs that benefitted from this fresh approach by Bully. I have included some examples to share with you:
Lute (ref# 20013) was first made by Schleich with a yellow lute and then Bully changed this to red. When Schleich started making smurfs in Hong Kong in around 1979, the red lute was sold in Australia under the name of Rocker. By around this time Bully had lost licence to manufacture smurfs.
Sunbather (ref# 20014) was first painted with red and white striped bathers buy when Bully acquired this smurf they painted it with different coloured bathers such as red & black, green & black and yellow & black.
Gymnast (ref# 20020) was first made by Schleich with no singlet. When Bully started to sell Gymnast it could be found with green or red singlets. Most collectors believe that the yellow singlet version was made for the National Petrol promotion in the UK in around 1978/79.
Sleepwalker (ref # 20021) was originally given a yellow pom pom by Schleich. Bully then also added green and red pom pom’s.
There was also some smurfs that their paint colours were changed completely and were never changed back by Schleich. So this makes some of early Schliech versions highly collectible as generally they were only sold for a short period.
A good example of this is Judge (ref# 20016). When Schleich started selling this smurf around in 1971 it was sold with a black robe. By 1974 Bully started to sell Judge initially also with a black robe though gradually they started selling a version with red robe up until 1979. Schleich never changed this and continued to sell it with a red robe.
When smurfs were being made out of Hong Kong in the early 1980’s colour variations continued to be made. So it is quite common to find variations between smurfs made in Europe and Hong Kong.
More recently colour variations are a little harder to find as they are not as obvious as they once were. But for the passionate collector they are still there to be found. I recently discovered Classic Harmony (ref # 20539) with a dull and shiny trumpet.
One of the biggest joys a smurf collector can have is the ability to display their smurfs and all the different colour variations together.
Keep on Smurfin
Kath B