Smurf Wars (in 28mm of course) (update 05/06)

[dartfrog]

It was mainly BP stuff for us here in the UK too. Was a reveltion, like you on holiday in France to find others available.

[white knight]

It's purely by accident I wandered into one of the local toystores and noticed a couple tiny smurf diecast cars to the side, which seemed about just right for my Smurf Wars project. Naturally I had to buy them and research the range when I returned home. Apparently these were a 2013 release (no doubt dusted off with the release of the new movie) and as such no longer in production. I still managed to find a place online that had a few sets left, so I snapped them up. They are called "Die Cast Racers", not to be confused with larger scale equivalents that go by other labels.



There are 5 variants. One is a seriously underscaled Gargamel with Azrael, but I figured it would convert nicely with some of my smurf heads and some greenstuff to get rid of the "evil" look. Or I could add a black smurf as the driver and leave the car as is.





Here are a few examples with a size comparison to my metal smurfs:





And a comparison of the heads. They are very close in size, though the plastic heads aren't looking to good from the front.



Since I had spares, I decided to have a go at beheading a couple to see how they would look with some of my metal heads. I think they look good (note that Smurfette's head isn't sitting well currently because I didn't remove some excess hair volume for a better fit yet.





Not sure what to use these for. As extra smurf civilians perhaps, driving some of Handy Smurf's inventions. Or maybe add a new "racing" minigame to the project called "Smurfy Kart". That could be fun...

[von Lucky]

A fortuitous find! Use them for a racing minigame, definitely. While you won't have guns, they can have smoke, oil, spikes as they race around a track Mario Kart-style (with a black smurf). Most car war rules will suit.

[The Voivod]

I see some Mad Smurf: Smurfy Road possibilities there 

[Mason]

A fortuitous find! Use them for a racing minigame, definitely. While you won't have guns, they can have smoke, oil, spikes as they race around a track Mario Kart-style (with a black smurf). Most car war rules will suit.

I echo this idea.
I have similar plans using Flintstones cars.
Maybe, if we both do, we can compare notes and ideas....if either of us getb this going, anyway.
 

[von Lucky]

Axles and Alloys II is a free set that can be worked off (itself being inspired by GZG's Full Thrust):
http://axlesalloys2.blogspot.com.au/

[white knight]

Mario Kart was indeed what I was getting at with the "Smurfy Kart" wordplay. From a quick glance, I noticed several Mario Kart tabletop homebrews, so that should be easiest to adapt.

[dartfrog]

What a smurfing good find. Scale seems good too.

[armchairgeneral]

An interesting thread though I haven't read all of it. Trouble is I now have the Smurf Song playing in my head - which I could do without 

[white knight]

Now, aside from all the other smurf goodness, I had been tempted for some time to get enough of the various soccer smurfs that were put out over the years by Schleich, perhaps the McDonald's ones if they were of a similar scale and some of my old Kinder ones, with some Schleich headswaps.

I gave up on that idea when I saw there was a complete soccer team with management and supporters put out by Edeka as a promotional item and that I could get them fairly cheap (15 figures posted to my door for under £10 seemed like a bargain compared to the Schleich ones). They are about 4cm tall, which is smaller than the schleich ones, but should work out better to make them look more like miniatures and less like toys.



Downside: they are of the smurf movie variety and I hate that look. So I set about trying to convert two of them to the classic, more cartoony smurfs, as a test. The first steps were to resculpt the eyes and eyebrows and fill out the brows for a more rounded head. The one with the open handpalms also had soms greenstuff applied to the fingers to make them more cartoony. The back of the heads had some lettering ("CE" and "(c) Peyo") that I also had to get rid of.

It's then that I noticed that these smurfs aren't in fact sculpted to be soccer smurfs, but rather repaints of regular smurfs. Since I already converted the heads, I decided to go a step further. I sculpted the edges of the shorts legs and added socks on one of them. I decided to leave the other one without socks to see if this step is really needed, as if this project goes forward, I'll be doing at least 22 + bench sitters and extras.  I got lazy and decided not to do the sleeves and just paint those on as they would be rather tight anyway. Finally, I went crazy and added the metal spikes to the sole of the raised foot, something I'm sure I'll regret when I do the others.

That left me with these:



They looked ok, but only a lick of paint would reveal whether the conversion worked. I decided to go for players from two different teams (which also allows me to do half of them in socks if I'm so enclined, instead of all of them). Generally soccer smurfs tend to be depicted with a little shield on their breast, so I reproduced that here. I initially did them without any blacklining, but towards the end I felt they needed it to make them pop a bit more. The blue I used is darker than the original blue they came in, but pretty close to the Schleich blue, so, I don't know if it's good or bad. Also, the "10" on the back of the red one is seriously off-center, so I'll have to redo that lest it will drive me crazy. Overall though, I think the conversion worked, they no longer look like the movie version and aside from the fact they are smaller, they could pass for Schleich smurfs I think.



A side by side of the originals and painted conversions:



Now this leaves me with a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand they ended up looking pretty good I think, but there was a lot of conversion work, so I could have stuck with my smaller metal versions and converted those instead.

They have the advantage of being rather cheap (for £20 to £25 I could probably get 3 teams worth and some extras) and being plastic, they are easier to cut up and create different poses. I also don't feel I have to be as neat or use highlights and shades on these, which is a timesaver. My metal ones would be harder to convert, but would open the option to do one team, cast them and use different heads, including perhaps a black smurf team. The smaller size would mean the field could look bigger too. Decisions, decisions...

[white knight]

OK, they look better in person. Still, not convinced.

[Svennn]

You really are a nutter   They do look "ok" as in there is nothing wrong with them but then so do the before shots imo.  Letraset or decal shirt numbers would sit better to my eye, but then I would want sponsors on mine if I were to do a team and I really do prefer the paler blue. I am old enough to remember the JET petrol station smurfs, in fact that was where I first encountered them, and they were paler.

I think the effort may be better spent on metal ones, they might even fit on subutteo bases

[white knight]

Yeah, I think you're right, it takes about as much work as the metal ones and they still look like the toys they are.

[Mason]

The metal seem like a better idea to me too (especially as you may be able to shift a few and recoup your costs) and it would give you options for more teams with no extra work after the initial burst.

As Svenn mentioned Jet, why not use them and maybe Kinder for sponsor logos on the shirts...?

[white knight]

Looks like they will be scrapped and started over from scratch with the metals, once I have enough castings of those.

They do look sort of nice when I look at them on the shelf (though very toylike), but I don't like them so much when they are blown up on the screen. The blacklining looks much more severe than in the flesh. May try giving them a lighter blue colour after all just to see what it does, but doubt I'll continue on this path.

I don't really care for sponsoring as I like how they are more retro outfits.