(continued)
I can understand about the spammers/boots/trolls, they can be very annoying!
Have you guys considered closing the registration for a while and see if the bots/spammers/trolls give up? Or maybe set up an invitation system, or an extra field in the registration - something like "Why do you wish to join?"
And maybe also an automatic email verification, kind of like the ones one has to click on a link or enter a password on the site to verify that that email is real? Wouldn't keep some spammers/trolls away, but would most likely stop the bots.
Anyway, for that long intro I promissed.
Can't really remember when we started collecting smurfs, but am almost sure I first come in contact with the smurfs via the comic books.
As my father was (and is) a comic read, and he kind of introduced us to it.
You've probably already noticed that the older smurfs aren't in that great shape or condition, but you see, we loved them and we played with them a lot!
One of my fondest memories from childwood is going wiht my parents to a toy fair in Lisbon, and seeing this huge display with "tons" of smurfs I didn't had or had even seen before, and all the houses and stuf. Damn, how I wished I could have them all!
I know I had (or have) a poster somewhere where the smurfs (the "original ones") were displayed. We used to mark it with our initials to mark which ones we had, and who owned it.
When I was in the 9th grade (I think), I made a poster ilustrating the simptoms of cancer... and I used the smurfs as the "people".
Not sure if I still have it or not.
Well, at some point we stopped buying smurfs, I'm guessing our interrests shifted a little, and they ended up being "put" away. Untill about 4-5 years ago, when my brother decided he wanted to loan them to the son of a friend of ours so he could play with them when he came to visit. He obsessed so much that we got tired of hearing him complaing. He finally found them last year, when he took that pic and then sent it to me.
Due to that fact, my father thought it would be funny to give us 7 smurfs for xmas (not the odd number there, he's an evil man
). Anyway, guess he's the one guilty to restart the flame.
Now if I could only remember which ones was he bought us it would be a great help (hope the goal keeper wasn't one of them
)
There are those who believe that life here began out there...