What’s not to like about Golfer Smurf, as you don’t even need to like playing golf to appreciate all the quirky little things you can find with Golfer Smurf first produced by Schleich in 1979 and sold in 1980.
The first version of Golfer Smurf produced was with yellow pants, red socks, black and white shoes. Golf club is brown & silver with a white ball. There was also a version with red pants & yellow socks produced shortly afterwards.
Sorry folks this is not a rare Muster marking but an injection mark
In 1980 Golfer Smurf was also released in Australia, wearing yellow pants, red socks and black shoes. He’s holding a silver golf club with the ball unpainted. The weird thing about these early ones is the large injection mark on their back. Typically you find this kind of injection mark under a smurf’s feet. Also the early ones produced out of Hong Kong had lighter yellow pants and matte black shoes.
In the beginning the holes in the hands for the golf club was smaller. After a while they changed to longer golf clubs with a thicker square shaped handle. Not entirely sure when they made this change but my guess is around 1982. This is around the time BP stopped selling smurfs in Australia and Hong Kong was only making smurfs to Wallace Berrie in the USA.
The other odd thing you can find with some of the Hong Kong ones is the year 1979 blocked out and replaced with the year 1980. Typically these are painted with darker colours.
There are at least two German versions with the longer golf clubs. One with a grey golf club and a white paint dot under the right foot and the second one with a silver grey golf club.
The last version produced was made out of China wearing yellow pants, red socks, black and white shoes. He’s holding a long silver golf club with the ball unpainted. Golfer was last produced by Schleich in 1993.
Two other golfing themed smurfs have been produced by Schleich. In 1986 Golf Smurfette was released, wearing a white dress and is about to tee off as she swings her dark grey plastic golf club back over the ball. This is my most favourite one out of the three.
In 1999 Schleich released a new golf smurf. This Golf Smurf can be seen with his golf bag over his left shoulder while carrying a white golf ball in his right hand. Wearing a yellow shirt, orange checkered pants and brown shoes. Some of thought this should have been called Golf Caddy Smurf!
Keep on Smurfin
Kath B