[André]

I have been trying to find the large house with new markings but there are no houses anywhere.

And no cottages either. I asked in Toys R us and the 2 other stores which sells these where I live and they are out of stock. And they don´t have any in their mainstores either. They won´t get any new ones from Schleich until sometime in the middle January.

But it is a good thing that they are selling very well.

[bwalters]

Hi Andre; Let me know if you can't find them. My TRU has the large house and Smurfette's house and blue roof. The large house is $39.99 and they have 4 or 5. The little one's are $14.99. shipping would kill you though.

[André]

Thanks Bill,

but I have all of them except the large house with the new addressmarking. And the large house box has to be packed after august this year to have that marking. And Schleich will still sell the large house next year so it is no hurry.

I just think it is intresting that so many are buying the houses and cottages here in Sweden. Either they are selling very well or Schleich has not manufactured so many of them. Could also off course be local troubles somewhere inbetween, like transports, no orders etc.

I can´t help thinking how or if they should change anything to make them sell more.

Like Maureen told us, it seems the anniversarysmurfs and the moviesmurfs are not selling so well. And it is not a good sign that Schleich remove more smurfitems compared to new ones released every year.
If you look at Lego, Playmobil etc. they change their products from time to time to adapt to the customer. For example just compare how the animals looked 20 years ago with the ones Lego and Playmobil are selling now.

It is pretty simple I think. The items that are not selling well they will remove.

And since the cottages seems populair I would love it if they start selling the furnitures, fences, gates, mushrooms, flowers etc again. The basic items for children to make smurfvillages. Not only themed normalsmurfs which are "hard" to play with if you are a child. So like a politician in the UK said:

Back to Basics.

Or maybe this is just because I am a big fan for the accessories.

[Smurfysmurf]

I agree with you, Andre

That's why I like the Playalong smurfs so much right now...they are based on the cartoon series and not anything outlandish..just smurfs that you can put into displays or play with.

I really hope Schleich will go back producing more classic smurfs again as those seem to be selling really well. From what I observed in Germany it was the classic ones that people picked out (going by what they picked out while I was standing there waiting to go back to the business of looking at markings ).

I also agree about the houses and playsets. My TRU had them and they seemed to be selling well (except for the large house which is pretty expensive considering we are in a recession) because everytime I went they had less and less of the small houses and playsets

BTW..I also noticed that the Jubilee smurfs weren't selling well in my local TRU whereas the other Schleich smurfs were