[Smurfysmurf]

Lately, I have been thinking about all these smurf items that are sold on ebay that come out of China.
I have been getting a few of them myself and most of them are very cute, although I have to admit I have gotten the ugliest smurfs from them as well.

However, I have started to rethink my buying from those sellers (as much as I want that stuff) because I am not sure I want to support unlicensed smurf items from China and am trying to look for officially licensed products that usually are made of better quality as well.

I was wondering how others feel about this....do you care if what you get is an unofficial item made cheaply in China and sold cheaply as long as it's cute? A lot of those items are so cute that like I said until a couple of weeks ago I myself bought them, too

Are these in the same category as the Spanish, Polish, Mexican fake smurfs a lot of us are so proud off?

I am really on the fence on this one...and would love to hear what others think...this really isn't a discussion about fake smurfs from the 80s..but more about the smurf items coming out of China

[Tintin]

Hi Maureen

I know what you mean.
When a few people offered the dvd from the smurfs i thought a real collector will buy the original one.
But then i thought ............what about all my smurfs Polish, Mexico, Spain etc etc etc...............were do you cross the line ????

I am still not sure for myself !!!

Tintin

[Lia]

I avoid the China items.
For me, there is a big difference between ( for instance) polish smurfs, made under the communistic regime when no smurfs from the "West" were allowed, and therefore interesting and the ugly things that they make in China.

Lia

[bradley]

I really can't believe the amount of unlicensed smurfs coming out of china at the moment. Ebay is FULL of it.... its becoming hard to spot the vintage licensed stuff on there. I really don't like the fake items. Prefer licensed so I don't buy any fakes unless I really love them. Like the fake set of pvc Kinders from a few years ago. And the only fake items I have bought recently and its only because there is a new chain of stores opened here in SA called Orange Country and they are selling a lot of the fake toys like the ugly plush and fake keyring figures. They actually have the How2Work fake kings and I picked up the white hat and pants king. Always wanted that one. I have the yellow one as well. And I also just bought a brainy keyring pvc figure based on the phone charms from Europe. Not tempted on anything else really at the moment with the fakes. OH! Apart from these 4 resin movie figures I found in a shop here also. They are so amazing I had to buy these.

So I don't really collect the fake items but if something really stands out that I must have then I will buy it... and I guess I haven't bought them off ebay these recent ones. I've only bought them because I've found them in a shop here. But for the most part I avoid unlicensed smurfs.

[Smurfysmurf]

I have to admit at first I was all over the new stuff and didn't care where it comes from...I felt like I liked it enough to want to have it.

What made me change my mind was the fake monopoly game that I first saw two or three weeks ago...after my initial excitement of a smurf monopoly game I looked a bit deeper into the description and saw that even though the seller won't spell out it's an unlicensed item if you pay attention you can see where it is carefully mentioned. And it isn't a single home made item but looks to come out of a factory or at least home grown factory to make money off us collectors...This really made me think about the whole Chinese market..and I decided to not play their game anymore and to look for licensed articles.

To everybody their own, and I do understand if collectors are buying it because they like, they can afford and they don't care if it's officially licensed or not...like I said, I've been there....I just changed my buying habit..of course, tomorrow I may see something I like so much that I simply don't care and want to have it

This is the monopoly I am talking about that I was very tempted of buying

[Smurfysmurf]

I have to say..when I see something like this, I wish Lafig would just break down and officially license it..



Hope Bill won't mind I stole his picture

[bwalters]

Hi all; I am probibly the most quilty of buying items from China. I probibly already have close to 100 items from there. I got several from there last night, and still have 48 on the way. The sad thing is about half of the items I have gotten from China, I bought from a person in either the UK or Australia, but when the packages came they were shipped from China. To this date I have recieved everthing I have ordered. And it all looks pretty nice. I think if I could find all the stuff I have bought I would by the real deal. I don't really have many stores that I can shop at. Dollar Gen that has nothing. Walmart which doesn't carry much, and a target about 25 miles away. Everything else is too far away to drive to. Unless I'm going there for something else, I buy on line. With gas as high as it is it's cheaper than making the drive. I'm a little curious about the things that come from China. The seven watches I got from China 2 days ago has stamps on it. According to the $ amounts on the Stamps I got about $35 worth of watches for $31.30 in free shipping. Each stamp has an amount, one $20 one $10 one $1 and one $.30 and one $.10. I doubt that it cost that much but that is what the stamps say. Does any one know What a $20 stamp from China is really worth?

[Gerda]

i like the stationary items alot and i'm tempted to get it, the monopoly set I think I'll pass on just because I would have figured that the insides and the figures where more smurfy, can you imagine a real smurf monopoly with mushroom houses and smurf figure characters as game pieces? I don't think a collector would pass on that, but the china fake is too yuck and uninteresting.
I'm just really surprised that imps puts up with it, a few years ago it wasn't so bad but now it's gotten really out of hand. What is truly sad is all the new collectors who are buying it not knowing the difference and then down the road when they want to sell there collection because they are no longer interested in the smurfs will not know that most of it are fakes therefor not worth what they want and try to sell it as vintage.
I guess there are two sides to it... the I want to have everything cheaply just because it's smurfs and the I want something that might hold up as a collector item price wise. If you look at collecting as an investment (not that we would ever get out of our collections what we put in) then it is really really bad for the hobby.
but I must admit some of the stuff is really cute and I justify my buying it because it is so cheap. But again I KNOW the difference between fake and real so it is an informed choice... screwing people over...not a good thing.

gerda

[bradley]

Here are some more fakes i spotted in a shop yesterday.... fakes of the asian and aussie mcdonald smurfs. They are in a cabinet so i didnt t have a good look at them and what price but they look very glossy and i dont think are made of pvc or plastic. When will all this faking end. i saw them and just laughed to myself. cant believe all this unlicensed stuff coming out of china.

[Tojo]

So far I have only bought the Chinese versions of the suprise egg smurfs from a few years ago which I bought because they never existed as pvc's before. I definitely wouldn't buy a Chinese set of fakes of Schleich smurfs unless I saw them on a street market being sold very, very cheaply so that I could compare them with the originals.

I certainly don't intend to line the pockets of some Chinese factory owner making fakes & selling them via the internet to gullible collectors / smurf fans. These people are criminals & should be avoided at all cost. If people buy the Chinese fakes in large enough numbers instead of the Schleich smurfs then Schleich might think, hey, why bother, and then reduce the range they produce to reduce their losses and that would be terrible for us collectors!!

[stampysmurf]

I have bought some of the fakes that I really like and I'm happy with them but I had to stop buying the Chinese fakes because I don't have the room to store that many smurfs. I am going to try and focus on buying a few harder to find/vintage smurfs than buying a whole bunch of fakes. But I have to say if I saw something that I really liked from China I would probably buy it.

[bradley]

I was in one of those "Orange Story" stores last weekend that sell all the stuff from china with a lot of unlicensed smurfs. Seems each store has something different. This store was further out for me to get to. They had some different items but this is the only photo I took. Haven't seen this fake smurfette money box before. Would be nice if it wasn't for the scary big eyes! Didn't buy her or anything else. Not really interested in this stuff. I've only bought the large White How2Work unlicensed King Smurf and one of those keyring pvcs modeled on the phone charms... I liked these fakes but they were expensive to buy each in this store so I went on ebay bought the whole set from China for cheap. I like these.

[Gerda]

ahh I would have passed on her too, she is too scary looking

[Smurfysmurf]

For some reason I find her cute and probably would have gotten her