Smurfs in the UK, why did we get the yellow variations?

Archived post from Wednesday, June 08, 2005

We've been asking some questions about why there are certain variations of smurfs found in the UK which aren't prevalent in other countries. Examples include the Super Smurf Chimney Sweeper with the yellow scarf, Shiver with the yellow scarf, Hiker with yellow flower and Brainy with the yellow glasses. These yellow variation smurfs are commonly found in old UK smurf collections from the late 1970s and early 80s.

After speaking to the person who headed the UK marketing campaign selling via the National Benzole garages, we have established that there was no specific plan to paint the UK smurfs in different colours. We are told the variations would not have been approved by Peyo, special colours were only ever used for special promotional items. The yellow variations we are told more than likely arose from rush orders where an urgent order for the UK may have been painted in a different factory as a one off. Perhaps they ran out of red paint? One thing is for certain, there was no specific marketing plan to make the UK versions of these smurfs different to any others.

This is an archive of our old Kitty's Cavern Smurfs Blog