[Smurfysmurf]

I received this blister bag last week and was surprised to see the smurf has the W. Berrie marking on it as I thought those were only sold in the W. Berrie blister bags in the US.

Does anybody know what smurfs were sold in this package? The seller also had the angry and cowboy smurfs, both of which I did not win.

Also, does anybody know if this was only sold in Great Britain, or was it also sold in South Africa and/or Australia?

[Lia]

I can`t answer your question Maureen,but what a unique blister!
a great find!

Lia

[André]

Great blister Maureen!!

regarding the W Berrie-marked smurfs, many of these were sold in Europe from 1984 and forward, like in the Mafi boxes in France. Probably because of the decreasing demand for smurfs in US, Australia etc where the Hongkongmade smurfs were sold. In mid 85 Applause stopped with smurfs. And since this was made in 1984 and then could have been sold late 1984 or even early 1985 it is no surprice to me that it contains a W Berrie-marked smurf. And if you look in the Jubileeblisters these many times also contains W Berrie-marked smurfs.

In another thread I showed a leaflet from around 1981/82 used in UK. At that time National Benzole still had the rights for the smurfs in UK, but it seems Coronet were the company(dealer, supplier??) importing or selling them?? That leaflet was marked both National and Coronet.

My guess is that when BP stopped with smurfs in around 1982, Coronet alone was the company distributing these to toystores in the UK. And only UK I think. This company off course distributed a lot of other toys also, but only a few smurfs since their peak were already in the early 80s in the UK. This is just me guessing so it could be wrong!

And I assume many smurfs could have been available in these blisters, just like in the W Berrie blisters??

[Lia]

That`s true
The yellow Schleich blisters, sold in the german store Karstadt contains also w.berrie smurfs

[Lia]

marking wberrie

[André]

I think from around 1984( sometimes in combi-sets from 84/85) all the way to 1989( the displayboxes) Schleich used a lot of these W Berrie marked smurfs all over the world. And as Schleich themselves has told us that in 1986/87 they had millions of unwanted smurfs in stock.
So most likely this was starting about 2 years before with decreasing demand and then maybe 3-4 years after when adapting the stocks and production to the demand.