The Smurfy News is the largest Internet newsletter about Smurfs and Smurf collecting with 1,376 subscribers worldwide and growing. Welcome to our first-time readers! If you know Smurf fans that might enjoy the Smurfy News, please help us grow and forward this e-mail to them! To subscribe to the Smurfy News, please visit http://www.esmurfs.com and enter you e-mail address in the Smurfy News subscription form. To unsubscribe, please see the bottom of this e-mail. =-=-=-=-= FOREWORD =-=-=-=-= This month's issue is going out a little early, as I have some other business that will tie me up late in the month when I usually publish the News... I don't have much in the way of all-new additions, or newly stocked items this month, but that is because we are already very well stocked and ready for the holidays! We will be shipping more frequently in the coming months, about 2 or 3 times per week instead of once. Please plan on ordering by Monday, December 17 for Christmas delivery in the US. If you can, please order sooner. We ship everything by US First Class mail, or Priority mail if it is over 13 oz. These packages *should* arrive within 2-5 days, as per the Post Office, but they are not guaranteed forms of delivery, so you cannot count on those time frames. 95% of the time, that's how long it takes, but please don't wait too long to order and gamble with someone being disappointed for the Holidays! Well, let's get on with the Smurfy News! -Pete http://www.esmurfs.com =-=-=-=-= CONTENTS =-=-=-=-= 1) FEATURED FIGURINE 2) NEW SMURFY ICONS 3) SMURF MUSEUM 4) THE SMURF KILLER 5) FROM THE MAILBAG 6) SMURFY NEWS GIVE-A-WAY 7) CLOSING =============================================== =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1) FEATURED FIGURINE =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This month we have added another figurine to the "Featured Figurine" page of eSmurfs.com! Read the text below, and visit the page (link below) for the pic - This time we feature the E+H Promo! "This is a hard to find promo Smurf produced by the Endress+Hauser company in Belgium. Unlike most Smurf figurines, it is not cast in PVC. He is made of a material called "Polystone" and was distributed in Belgium, Italy and France. The Smurf is holding a pyrometer, an instrument used for measuring temperature, especially where it is beyond the range of mercurial thermometers. In the early 90's, E+H was developing a new industrial pyrometer called the "PT 100." While developing a new sensor for this device, they thought that this device somehow looks a little bit like a Smurf and so they decided to produce a Smurf for promotional purposes. This was done in cooperation with IMPS on September 27, 1993. This Smurf has the "EH" letters engraved on his "helmet." They produced a limited quantity of 4000 pieces. As per E+H, not all pieces are numbered. The English translation of the name given to this Smurf by Endress and Hauser is "The Temperature Smurf," although it is also known as the "Pyrometer Smurf" or the "Endress+Hauser Promo." --- Thank you Stefan Schneider (AngelSmurf) and Dirk Bliesener of Dirk's Smurfy Page (http://www.smurf.de.vu) for helping with this info! You can find Stefan and Dirk at the eSmurfs.com bulletin board or contact Dirk, an avid collector, at Dirk.bliesener@directbox.com" =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 2) NEW SMURFY ICONS! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Our friend Stephen in England has created yet another Smurfy addition to the eSmurfs.com bulletin board! Stephen has already created a host of avatars for registered users to choose from, and also created icons of most of the Smurfs characters - now he has replaced our old yellow smiley emoticons with Smurfy blue emoticons! Thanks Stephen from all of us for making the eSmurfs Bulletin Board the Smurfiest board around! To see the new emoticons in action, visit the Bulletin Board at: http://www.esmurfs.com/cgi-bin/forum2/dcboard.cgi?az=lobby AOL Click Here! People are using them in just about every message. To see what styles are available, just post a message. The full range of icons available are shown right there, just click one to add it to your message. There's "Smile," "Big Grin," "Wink," "Yum," "Angry" and lot's more! Come check it out! Be sure to say hello! Everyone is welcome - come with questions, because we love to learn together! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 3) SMURF MUSEUM =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Step right up ladies and gentlemen! That's it, no crowding, lots of room for everyone! You are about to witness the odd, the bizarre, the one-of-a-king! Enter the eSmurfs.com Smurf Museum! http://www.esmurfs.com/smurfs-museum.html AOL Click Here! If you have a strange and unique item in your Smurf collection, share it with eSmurfs, and you may just find it on display! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 4) THE SMURF KILLER =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Here is a strange article I found on the net: "Sometime in the mid-1980s, local artist Garth Danielson decided he'd had enough. Our televised culture of cuteness, he decided, had gone too far. What threw him over the edge, specifically, was a cloying colony of small, blue creatures then inhabiting a show on Saturday mornings and proliferating in figurine form everywhere. We're talking about Smurfs. "They were just kind of icky, and they don't have good grammar," Danielson recollects with something like a leer. At first glance this 45-year-old Minneapolitan might be mistaken for a close relative of Jerry Garcia: the graying beard and shoulder-length hair, the thickening waistline that jiggles when he's amused. Though the Smurfs have long been exiled from television and store shelves--replaced by generations of Rugrats and Teletubbies--Danielson had found his foil, and in a sense, his muse. Garth Danielson is the killer of Smurfs. The macabre series started out innocently enough: Danielson needed some blue self-hardening clay, and Smurf modeling kits were cheap. On a lark he decided to fabricate one of the three-inch models. It might have ended there if Danielson's girlfriend Karen Trego had not decided to put a spike through its blue head. "I said, 'Now that's funny,'" Danielson recalls. "So we made about 20 or 30 of them and gave them away as Christmas presents." Heartened that the dead Smurfs had proved quite popular among his friends, Danielson and Trego began to expand upon the idea. (Trego was Danielson's chief collaborator until she died in 1990.) Some of the sculptures are simple, such as a Snoopy figurine ramming his skateboard into a Smurf's chest. Others are elaborate little dungeons of torture, such as "Mad Scientist's Coffee Break." Here, a crazed doctor sits in his lab, blood smeared on his face, relaxing while holding a cup of coffee. Around him are Smurf corpses, the centerpiece being a Smurf stretched out onto a gurney with a needle injected into his arm. In any given piece, the perpetrators of these heinous crimes against Smurfanity may or may not be present, but we always see the victims. And judging by their wide-open, blissed-out eyes, the poor things never knew what hit them. As Danielson walks from the couch to the dining room table--passing numerous sci-fi paraphernalia and action figures on the way--he cannot contain his excitement about "June 1990." Perhaps the work marks him as a true visionary: An ode to the collapse of Smurf fame, it was created several years before NBC mercifully canceled the show. Set in a miniature living room, the piece features a houseguest, Pac Man, sitting on a couch, blood running down the yellow sphere of his face. The coffee table in front of him holds a half-finished game of Chinese checkers and a box of tranquilizers (props that were easily found at a local doll-house supplier). On the floor is the body of a dead Smurf and copies of tiny magazines whose headlines scream: "Pac Who?" and "Smurfette Dies." "This happened after the Smurf and Pac Man had both fallen out of favor and weren't popular anymore," Danielson explains. "And in a drunken, drugged-out fit, the Smurf put an ax in the Pac Man's head, and then shot himself. It was a murder-suicide pact. They've lost their fame, and the only girl in the village has died. They have nothing left to live for anymore." Recently, Danielson has been branching out from the merely gory--the Smurfs in White Castle hamburger buns, for instance, which he sold at a Minneapolis sci-fi convention. (Strangely, no one ever bought the sculpture of a Smurf nailed to a crucifix.) Though his medium--mass Smurficide--remains the same, he has started to address more literary themes. In "Mickey's Heart of Darkness," for instance, the mighty rodent, sporting a pith helmet, stands along a riverbank by an overturned canoe. The shores are littered with tiny blue bodies. "Mickey is going upriver and he encounters a bunch of Smurfs," Danielson says, "and he has to kill them. It's like a cathartic event for Mickey." Mickey, like Conrad's Kurtz, has exterminated the brutes. Danielson continues to give these pieces away as presents to close friends, and he occasionally shows them at Dreamhaven, where he is a part-time employee. He cannot say for sure how many Smurfs he has killed in the past decade. And because neither his supply of sadism nor blue clay is running out, Danielson will continue to mold smiling, happy victims. " Talk about home-made Smurfs! Sheesh! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 5) FROM THE MAILBAG =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- I just wanted to let you know that you were picked coffeeandprozac.com cool site of the week. Although a return link would be appreciated it is not necessary. Our target market is people whose formative years were in the eighties and I thought your site would interest them. Congratulations, Dan Bimrose ===== Well, Gee, thanks Dan. Every link is appreciated! If you have a web site and want to link to eSmurfs.com, please visit: http://www.esmurfs.com/smurfs-links.html#linkus AOL Click Here! for HTML you can cut and paste to add a text link, or even a Smurfy banner to your web site. I also invite you to link directly to the Bulletin Board, Collector Checklists, the Smurf Shop, the Smurfy News subscriber form, or any eSmurfs.com resource! I will ALWAYS add a return link to your site from eSmurfs.com's Links page, just let us know! Your site does NOT have to be a Smurf site to exchange links with eSmurfs.com! ================ Dear Pete: Hi from Barcelona. Only a few lines to say that the "Jo love aquests colors" poster is from Catalunya; the smurf has the Catalunya flag and wears the Barcelona football team clothes. And the Stand smurf that says "Jo cule" means he is a Barcelona football team fan, like if he said "I hooligan" or "I tiffossi". From Joan === Thanks Joan! I edited my Smurf Shop to include this information! If anyone notices a discrepancy, or has additional information about a piece in the Smurf Shop, please share it with me! Here is a link to the Smurf Shop: http://www.esmurfs.com/smurfs-shop.html < ahref="http://www.esmurfs.com/smurfs-shop.html">AOL Click Here! ================= Dear Pete: Did you guys know that there is a Dutch commercial with Smurfs in it? In the Netherlands a new traffic rule is introduced. There are two commercials: one for tv, the other for radio. In both commercials are Vader Abraham and the Smurfs. You can find it at http://www.geefhetdoor.nl/ on the kids page. Joyce === Wow Joyce! This is neat, thanks for sharing it with us! Readers, go to the link above, after the intro, click the link for "kids pagina," then for "TV Sport" to view the commercial! ================== Hi there. just to let you know in Germany a NEW Smurf comic was released. This is a NEW 44 pages long story created by Peyo's son Thierry Culliford about trouble in the Smurf village. German title "Die Schluempfe in Gefahr" (English title could be "The smurfs in danger") (French original title: "La Menace Schtroumpf") Please check your book/comic store for a issue in your language. -angelsmurf === Thanks AngelSmurf! Angel (Stefan) is a frequent poster at the eSmurfs.com bulletin board. Come visit us at the Internet's most active Smurf Stop - the eSmurfs.com bulletin board! Here's a link: http://www.esmurfs.com/cgi-bin/forum2/dcboard.cgi?az=lobby AOL Click Here! ===================== Hi Pete I am a smurf collector from Australia. My brother and I received a smurf if we washed the dishes for a week. The smurfs laid hidden away for years, although they were never forgotten. Years later I finally convinced my mum, that at the age of 27 I was responsible enough to take mt treasured little blue friends home to live with me. === I just love these anecdotes from collectors around the world! Share your stories with us, and I will reprint them here in the Smurfy News! Just hit "reply" now to send me your tale! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 6) SMURFY NEWS GIVE-A-WAY =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- I have pulled a couple of Smurfs from my "No-Box-Supers" bin for this month's contest. These pieces are actually Minty-Mint, but have no box. They are 40228 Papa in Rocker and 40229 Smurf & Piano! I will also award another pair of the acrylic Smurf keychains I gave away last month! For your shot at winning, just complete the entry blank located here: http://www.esmurfs.com/smurfs-contest.html AOL Click Here This is a secret link, only published in the Smurfy News! This monthly contest is *only* for Smurfy News subscribers! Winners will be selected randomly and announced at the eSmurfs.com Bulletin Board in a couple of weeks. Good Luck to all who enter! =-=-=-=-=-= 7) CLOSING =-=-=-=-=-= I want to remind Smurfers once again to allow plenty of time for the US Post Office to do it's job in getting your Holiday Smurf gifts to you! I wouldn't want to hear about any Smurfs not making the holidays because they were purchased too late! Please order as early as possible for holiday delivery! Many of you also know my sister Melissa does the packing and shipping for eSmurfs.com, she is downstairs busting her buns as I type to get all your orders out. I have just set her up with an e-mail address; melissa@esmurfs.com This is not to be used for customer service of any kind yet, but I wanted to share it with my friends on the Smurfy News list and encourage you to send her a Smurfy greeting - I know she'll like that. Her work is very behind-the-scenes but she is like my right arm, and I think it would make her very happy if a few of you would send her some thanks and encouragement! I won't tell her I did this, so I do hope some of you will take the chance to surprise her with some thanks and well wishes! She works *very* hard and it will do her good to feel appreciated. Please do check out the Smurf Shop - I made sure we have plenty on hand of all that I could find to offer! Here's a link: http://www.esmurfs.com/smurfs-shop.html AOL Click Here Until next time, keep it Smurfy everyone! -Pete eSmurfs.com =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- THE SMALL PRINT =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- The "Smurfy News" is a free monthly e-mail newsletter published by eSmurfs.com (http://www.esmurfs.com) Joining or leaving the list is voluntary, we do not spam! Submissions are always welcome! Send them to pete@esmurfs.com or hit reply now. All letters will be considered for publication unless the author requests otherwise. They may be edited for clarity and space, and we may print your first name and State or Country unless you request that we do not. All right reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole, or in part, without the express written consent of the author. The contents of this newsletter do not necessarily reflect the opinions of eSmurfs.com. eSmurfs.com makes no warranties, either expressed or implied, about the truth or accuracy of the contents or information provided by the sponsors or by the writers. Use info contained herein at your own risk. Nothing in life is guaranteed. Let the buyer beware. A stitch in time gathers no moss. Oh, and SMURF ON!!