When I first read about a green lipstick variation of Ballerina Smurfette, I was determined to find one. My initial thoughts was that it was just a paint error but the more I looked into this, the more I thought it could be an actual variation.
Bully first sold Ballerina Smurfette back in 1978. Looking back it is hard to believe Bully only produced two Smurfettes between 1974 to 1979, flirting Smurfette (#20034) and Ballerina Smurfette. Now days when Schleich produces a new themed set, it is not uncommon to find one or two Smurfette’s. The Olympic theme back in 2012 is probably a good example, where three of the ten Smurfs were Smurfettes.
Little was changed with Ballerina Smurfette over the years it was sold. Like a lot of Smurfettes, you can quite often find shade variances with her hair from lemon yellow to dark yellow. The green round base can also be found with different shades of green. These small differences are more to do where Ballerina Smurfette was painted as it is not uncommon to the Hong Kong version with darker colours and the Bully marked ones with lighter colours.
In 2011 when Schleich released their decade display boxes, Ballerina Smurfette was included in the 1970 to 1979 display box. With this Ballerina Smurfette it appears that the same mould may have been used for the figurines but the base was thicker and more robust to stop it falling over.
Now back to the Ballerina Smurfette version with the green lipstick, do you think it was this a paint error or was it meant to be like this? It does seem like a strange choice of colour for lipstick. But the lipstick is also lighter green than the one used on the base, which makes me think it was intentional.
I have seen this green lipstick version on a few different collector’s websites. As the lipstick is hand painted onto the figurine, the thickness of the lipstick can vary greatly. I also noticed that with mine, it has a tiny bit of red paint underneath the green lipstick. So mine could have been a repaint! My other theory is that if you combine blue and yellow paint together it makes green! So is it likely that the green and yellow paint colours were mixed together to create green lipstick!
It is these kind of things that make collecting smurfs a lot of fun. Paint error or intentional, it really does not matter. I would like to think that Schleich still does some hand painting of their smurfs just to ensure that every smurf has it’s own personality.
Keep on Smurfin
Kath B