Blue Cavern

Hi,

I just wanted to give you some information regarding the forklift.

In the beginning they were sold with this very rare brown chain. I have 2 of these and one from the first boxvariation sold of this playset.

Ösi told us in his list that these were made for Kwak, but no forklift were ever sold for Kwak. I have the Quelle catalogues and they are not in there. And as we know the green snailcarriage were sold as a farmlife accessorie by Schleich( see Stefans catalogues) so the list is not accurate.

A funny thing with the forklift is that they used the same wheels as for the snail carriage all the time. And that is why you alkways get 16 parts in the boxes instead of like said on the boxes 14!!

And for both the carriage and the forklift they addapted the wheels to fit the plugs. The oldest variation with no thicker part "in the beginning" of the plug is rare for the forklift and only used in the beginning.

Hi Andre

Have you noticed that that in the catalogue not only the chain is dark brown, but most of the structure is dark brown and not silver like the new ones. I have never seen one exacly like the picture, have you?

So Schleich used the same wheels for the forklift as they already had made for the snail carriage. And that is the reason you always get 2 spare plugs with the forklift. They were made for the yellow trailer( barrel) in carriage playset.

I hope you see the arrows on the picture??

Hi Andre

Have you noticed that that in the catalogue not only the chain is dark brown, but most of the structure is dark brown and not silver like the new ones. I have never seen one exacly like the picture, have you?

Hi Pierre,

I think it is like this.

As you see on the picture the grey parts are silver in the beginning on both hongkong and german variations. The wheels are darkbrown. But they instead used the wheels they already had for the snailcarriage which are lightbrown.

On the first variation of the forklift the brown part you put the sacks on is darker but not as dark as the wheels.

If you check the picture on many of the first realeases in the catalogues they many times are protypes and not 100% accurate.

I have completed my list with years for all smurfs, playsets, buildings etc so I can tell you the years this was sold.

It was sold between 1982 and 1994 in Germany. probably made to go with the windmill 1982. In US they started selling the forklift 1983.

So there are only 3 mayor differences in the boxes. The first variation with only french and german writing on the front is the most rare one and only used in the beginning. They changed the boxes in 1984. And added the english to the front also.

Then you have the W Berrie box shown before in other threads.

If you look more closely on the first box you see that they look the same on the front( first picture) but they have differences in the warning for small parts on the sides( 2nd picture).

The newest boxes on top and oldest with no warning regarding children under the other ones?? I don´t understand french that good??

So the first one don´t mention Mafi like the other ones.

One intresting thing with the windmillplaysetbox is that it has the newer german forklift with matte lightgrey parts pictured.

So maybe this box was made later?? This playset we never find in any german or US catalogues. But it is mentioned together with many other playsets in the Maficatalogues.

Look at these articlenumbers:

40009 Large house playset ( also in gherman catalogues)
40010 6 cottages( 2 of each colour)
40016 Cottage with smurf
40017 Smurfette cottage with smurfette
40019 Windmill playset
40021 first used for farm in Mafi catalogues( later used for the smurftrain)
40022 Farm playset( never seen any box??)

Last picture is of some differences in the chains.

In the beginning they were matte( brown and yellow).

The HK one is more shiny and the newer CE chain is very light yellow.

andre

Any Idea what happend to these prototypes>

I have no idea Pierre,

I assume their must be at least one of each somewhere, maybe at Schleich?? There are a lot of these like smurftrain, petrolstation, forklift, airplane, first courting, first digger etc etc. But these never made it to production so they are not that intresting for me.
But the variations which made it to production but only made for a short while are very intresting!!

I think the reason for these prototypes are that, just like today the catalogues are made sometimes almost one year before they start selling and therefore they put "what they got so faar" on the pictures in the catalogues???

Pierre,

take the Hulasmurfette as an example. the first variation made was not approved by Peyo and never made it to production. But one must be in Schleichpossetion since it is in catalogues.

I think there are paintvariations that are shown but Peyo did not approve and therefore they were changed. And these sometimes fakers easily can make copies of??

Thank you André,

here are some pics of my forklift with brown chain.

more pics

Stefan,

I am the one who should thank you!!

I have gone through all your catalogues now and adding all years of production to all smurfs and accessories. That would have been impossible without your pictures.

Exactly the same marking on mine and since the chain easily gets broken I am sure these are among the very hard to find accessories for smurfs.

By the way, have you ever seen any Schleichcatalogue from 1972,1973??? According to the Schleichbook Schleich made catalogues then. But probably extremly rare since they did not make so many items then?? It would be nice to see which of the old Schleichsmurf houses they showed in these catalogues.

It's my pleasure

I haven't seen any Schleich catalogue, booklets, wallposter or other paper stuff before 1979, and all the material I have is published here (except the Schleich Figuren Buch 1986, I think this is well known and common).

From Bully I have only the black/white copies from 1974 and 1975, both published here.
One other catalogue I have (but not published here) is smurf related too, it is the Bullyword catalogue from January 1998 regarding and announcing the opening of the Bullyworld Museum in Spraitbach. The catalogue shows a range of their figurines made during 25 years 1973 til 1998.

It's my pleasure

I haven't seen any Schleich catalogue, booklets, wallposter or other paper stuff before 1979, and all the material I have is published here (except the Schleich Figuren Buch 1986, I think this is well known and common).

From Bully I have only the black/white copies from 1974 and 1975, both published here.
One other catalogue I have (but not published here) is smurf related too, it is the Bullyword catalogue from January 1998 regarding and announcing the opening of the Bullyworld Museum in Spraitbach. The catalogue shows a range of their figurines made during 25 years 1973 til 1998.

I think Tojo posted pictures from that one in another thread.

But many things are wrong in this regarding years and pictures. Eventhough a very intresting catalogue to read.

The by faar best and most important catalogues, poster and books are the ones made the same year as the items they show. These ones are for real. Also items like puzzles, records, playcards etc with pictures from the same years are lovely.

And off course the information on boxes, wrappings etc made when the smurfs were sold!!!!!!

.....

Hi Shinysmurf!!

you don´t have to excuse yourself when you disagree!!

The point with a forum like this is to discuss things we are unsure about. So I think it is very good that you bring questions like this up.

3 to 4 years ago I would never have thought it could be wrong also.

But the more research you do the more you find out that don´t match. the problems in this case is that both Bully and Schleich made these figurines.

We have both Bully and Schleich catalogues from the years these things happened and therefore can basicly tell exactly which smurfs were sold by each company each year. I will show these and explain later.

And regarding the Bullymuseum catalogue. I don´t think they did these mistakes intentionally. It is maybe caused by wrong person doing the catalogue???

Still basicly it is wrong and not correct. This is not that rare though, many catalogues made can have faults, like the DSK 4, this don´t always mean they are intentional. Could just be based on the wrong information given at the time!!

Shinysmurf,

I have to say this also!!

I will have re-read all things I have written before since I learn new thing all the time and many of the things I have written one year ago may not be what I know today. That is also a good thing since we get new information all the time, from different collectors, catalogues, posters etc..

So the best thing is like you do, ask the question again!!

For example now we also have pictures of the smurfs Bully sold all the way from the time they started in 1973 to 1979. And these pictures are from the times these were sold and not from a persons memory 35 years after it happened!! That is always good to know, especially when trying myself to remember what happened 35 years ago! Maybe me getting old though???