Blue Cavern

Hi guys, I was carrying on with the update to regular smurfs on Blue Imps last night and I have just got to the figures that also have the Dupuis Union markings eg. judge, mirror etc.

I know these are relatively early figures but I am pretty sure they are not the first ever figures. What I am trying to figure out is where to place them in a chronological order. I am trying to be consistent with markings and at the moment I intend to place them after the Schleich emblem markings but before the normal Schleich and Bully markings but I am not 100% sure this is correct.

Any information would be appreciated.


Also, the quality of these generally regarding mold and paint quality really is quite bad so even though I have always assumed these to have been licensed products but I am actually starting to wonder about this now too.

An idea I had last night was to try and produce a complete timeline diagram to show when all the various markings were available but I have a feeling this might be a bit difficult to do but would be a wonderful bit of information. Does anyone know, has this been done already? If not, it is something I will definitely look into in the future.

Skim reading a little here but Fram wrote me a report on Dupuis smurfs and I am not sure if any of this info helps but here it is: -

http://www.kittyscavern.com/dupuis-smurfs.htm

Thanks Karen, that is a great article written by Fram.

Unfortunately there is no mention of the Dupuis Union markings here but I am sure we can get to the bottom of this.

Oh duh! Told you I was skim reading!

I have once, in a distant past, written about the years the Dupuis Union Smurfs must have been made. I can't find the post again, but my impression is that the Dupuis Union Smurfs are based on Schleich (not Bully) Smurfs from 1972 or 1973, and that they have been made only in that year / those years. They are no intermediate series, but a parallel one (i.e. the Schleich ones were for sale simultaneously with the Dupuis Union ones, which were probably given away with some products). I have not yet found defnitively any advert about them though, so I can't be sure.

Hi Fram, Thanks for that.

It sounds vaguely familiar and just about what I was thinking so I do appreciate your answer as I now feel a bit more confident about my listing order.

Hi Guys, thanks for bringing this up Rach, thanks to Karen to pointing this out, and thanks so much Fram for all your smurfy knowledge on these Dupuis. We were really lucky to win 3 large dupuis and the small prisoner a couple of weeks ago . And i won a small gold dupuis for Simon for christmas. Now i have back ground history on these, as i was wanting to know more about them. Cheers guys Lucie

does anybody knows something about the markings of the Dupuis smurfs ?
I only ask because I have Dupuis smurfs with and without markings but I'm not clear about the unmarked smurfs

Hi Cheesy,

are you talking about the Dupuis Union figures (like the normal Schleich smurfs) or the figures with their hands held out like the pic below?

talking about that one looking like a normal Schleich but without markings

Interesting smurf Cheesy and Thanks for the picture. I don't think I have ever seen that box before.

I only know which my Dupuis smurfs are because of the marking. Due to the quality of these normally, I am guessing it might be quite difficult to tell the difference between a fake and a real one if the markings were not there to show.

However the one in your pic looks to be very good quality, not like the normal Dupuis Union smurfs with markings.

For Cheesy's one, I have seen that recent eBay auction as well, and it was the first time I saw that box, but I imagine (guesswork here) that Dupuis resold Schleich Smurfs for the French (and perhaps Belgian, ...) market, since they had some shops for their own stuff (comics, coloring books, ...) anyway.

For the Dupuis Smurfs: the Dupuis Union ones always have markings. The old, "real" Dupuis Smurfs can come without markings, with Dupui, or with Dupuis (the latter two only on the small ones; I think the medium and large ones always came without markings). There is for the moment no difference in value between the markings. And I have never seen a fake Dupuis Smurf so far.

Oooh lovely smurfies.....


Smurfy regards
Steve

Never seen that box before either Cheesy....thanks for posting it

Dyar