40012

There are 2 posts tagged 40012 (this is page 1 of 1).

Smurf cottages

If moving house is meant to be one of the most stressful things you will experience in your lifetime, just take a moment to think what it is like for the smurfs when they need to move a new mushroom cottage.

Like everything else to do with smurf collecting there many variations to be  to be found with the smurf cottages. It would be naive of me to think that the only variations are only to be found in the colour of the roof; red, blue and green with the older style cottage and two different colours with the newer style.

When I say older style of cottage I am referring to the ones made between 1978 to 1986 and then again from 1991 to 1995. It should also be noted that Smurfette’s Cottage wasn’t released until 1983. The newer style of cottage are the ones made after 1996 through to 2010.

With the older style of cottage, the door can be found with a heart shaped window. Later the window changed to more of a bell shaped window with curtains. The newer style cottages can only be found with the bell shaped window with curtains. Smurfette’s cottage can only be found with a heart shaped window both the older and newer styles. 

Other coloured variations to be found with the older styles of cottages are with the door and window & door frames. Anywhere from light grey to light tan brown to dark brown. The new style of cottages are commonly found with dark brown doors, window & door frames. 

All cottages were originally sold with a butterfly, though over the years these tend to get lost. Typically the red, blue and green cottages had a yellow butterfly with blue detailed wings. Smurfette’s cottage can be found with a light lavender butterfly sometimes these can be painted but always.

The butterfly with the newer style of cottage can vary depending on the cottage. For example the red/yellow roof cottage can be found with a red butterfly, the blue/dark red cottage can be found with a light blue butterfly and the new Smurfette Cottage with a yellow butterfly. 

In Australia, BP only sold the red and green roof cottages as far as I am aware. The first picture of the red cottage was shown back in 1980. However the blue roof cottage was never made in Hong Kong, but I am not sure why this was.

Also back in the good old days BP Australia sold the cottage for only $3.99. Imagine buying yourself a new cottage for just $3.99!

Keep on Smurfin

Kath B

 

Seeking Smurf Cottage

Some may say I continue to be a silly woman for breaking a collector’s principle this week, for not buying a Smurf’s Cottage in its original box. Over my time collecting smurfs, I have acquired six cottages but none in their original boxes. Don’t get me wrong I like the look of the cottages especially displayed in different parts of the house but if there was a choice between smurfs and a cottage I would most likely go for the smurfs!

To be honest the box had seen better days, as you could see where someone had ripped off the original price sticker on it. The pop up card that would have been used to hang up the item on display was now looking rather poorly as it flopped across the top of the box. Once again I probably did a big no-no by opening up the box to inspect the condition of the green roofed cottage and also to ensure it included its butterfly. 

With the Green Cottage that I was considering, this had a light brown door with an oval shaped window with curtains covering the sides of the oval surrounded by a light grey door frame. The window frames were also painted light brown. The Cottage also included it’s yellow butterfly with painted blue wings.  

The Cottages were first made by Schleich in 1978 in three different colours, red, green and blue. The green roofed cottage was given article number 4.0012. It appears that they used the same box for all three cottages and would just place a tick in a tick-box to indicate which coloured roof belonged in the box. Back in 1981 Bp Australia was selling the cottages for just $3.99.

 The whole ‘mint condition in box’ thing just doesn’t matter to me. It is true that I like to keep the Super Smurfs and Playsets boxes as I find them fascinating to read. But in the end I also feel a cottage looks better out of its box. 

Keep on Smurfin

Kath B