Smurfy
Facts
"Smurfs? Yes I remember the little blue and white guys."
Almost everyone knows of the smurfs, whether it is from collecting
the PVC figures as a child, watching the smurf cartoons or more
recently seeing them in McDonalds promotions.
The smurfs first appeared during the 1950's in a Belgian cartoon
comicstrip which followed the adventures of Johan and Peewit.
Created by Peyo (Pierre Culliford), the little blue imps were
discovered deep in the forest living in a mushroom house village.
Since then the smurfs have gone on to achieve world wide popularity,
starring in comics, books, cartoons, full length feature films
and even recently in video games.
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Johan and
Peewit
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The PVC smurf
figurines were first introduced in 1965 with over 400 different
figures having been produced so far. After taking into consideration
different markings, colours and mold shapes there are actually thousands
of different smurfs to collect, with new variations still being
discovered today. New smurf figures are still being produced, in
fact there have only been two years (1988 and 1991) that no smurfs
were introduced. Every year, up until the year 2000, 100 different
figurines (The Golden 100) were available, some were newly introduced
and some were reproductions of older figures, this was reduced to
50 in 2001 due to the deterioration of older molds.
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Normal,
Gold & Prisoner
The first 3 smurfs introduced in 1965
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Just about
every occupation, sport, musical activity and special occassion
has been made into a smurf character over the years. Along with
the smurf figurines, other smurf merchandise has become available
including super smurfs (smurf figures with accessories), playsets
and buildings, smurf a grams (figures on stands) and you will
find smurf images on just about anything from bed linen and curtains
to lunchboxes and alarm clocks!
There are a huge amount of smurf collectors world wide and with
the internet making international smurf collecting so much easier
this very popular hobby will quite likely grow even more in the
future.
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Hip Hop
and Cyber from the new generation of smurfs.
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