There is no better feeling than making a smurf discovery that you didn’t realise you had. Or when you are out looking for smurfs to add to your collection. When I first started collecting I would often find Drummer Smurf in a squatting like position with red and white drumsticks playing a red drum.
So imagine my surprise when I came across a Drummer with yellow drumsticks. At first I thought that it was not that unusual to find colour variations within a particular smurf. But there was something about this Drummer looked different to my other Drummers. So as habit, I picked up the smurf to look underneath for it’s markings and discovered it was a two piece mould with no markings under the drum.
Had I just come across a smurf that looked genuine to the eye but was actually a fake because it was a two piece mould that shared no markings under the drum. Surely not. The PVC material felt so real and not like a grotesque hard home made ones.
I then suddenly recalled reading about some early smurfs made by Schleich were made out of two moulds. Once again I picked up the smurf to have a closer inspection and found a © Peyo marking on the arm. Slowly my breathing started to return to normal and collector’s instinct started to kick in. It was at that point I knew I had to have this smurf.
When I arrived home, I found one of my existing Drummer’s and started to examine the difference between the two versions. Sometimes it is not until you can closely compare two smurfs together that you really notice smaller differences between them.
The Drummer with red and white drumsticks appears to be squatting behind his drum. You could almost see his knees are hugging the drum. The figure and drum are an one piece mould.
The Drummer with yellow drumsticks appears to be almost standing behind his drum. The drum is a seperate piece to the figure. If you look at this Drummer from a side on view you can actually see how the drum slots into the smurf.
Schleich first made Drummer back in 1966 as a two piece mould with yellow drumsticks. At some stage between 1966 and 1972 Schleich started making Drummer as one piece mould, still with yellow drumsticks. It wasn’t until around 1977 that the Drummer was sold with red and white drumsticks.
If you have a passion for smurfs sold in Australia, Drummer was one of the first ten smurfs sold by BP Australia back in 1979. This is also one of the reasons why Drummer is still easily found today, as they can be easily found in someone’s stashed away childhood collections.
Keep on Smurfin
Kath B