1 of 19
Photos by Byron Kerman
2 of 19
3 of 19
4 of 19
5 of 19
6 of 19
7 of 19
8 of 19
9 of 19
10 of 19
11 of 19
12 of 19
13 of 19
14 of 19
15 of 19
16 of 19
17 of 19
18 of 19
19 of 19
Collectors know that when the big-budget movie version of their absurdly large and/or rare toy collection finally hits the screen, the time is ripe to sell. So when animated kid flick The Smurfs (inexplicably) came out just over two weeks ago, Keith Rawlings knew it was time to ascend to the attic of his Kirkwood home, and laboriously bring down box after box stuffed with a massive payload of pride/shame in a sky-blue hue.
Rawlings, hoping to finance the purchase of a new car (“I’m driving a 1990 Honda that’s as old as the Smurfs are,” he avers), decided to try to unload a 20-year-old collection of vintage Smurf memorabilia from the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Last week, hoping to generate publicity for his efforts, Rawlings (a PR director for a local McDonald’s who also runs a children’s charity, Youth in Action), filled the lion’s share of his basement with an obsessive display of Smurf-iana that prompted both the desire to ingest and the desire to never again ingest serious hallucinogens.
The breadth of the collection was truly… Smurftacular. Rawlings has accumulated puzzles, cereal, riding toys, play dishes, stuffed animals, baby spoons, Velcro-close wallets, paint-by-numbers kits, figurines, Colorforms sets, bottles of bubbles, Pez dispensers, tennis shoes, dog toys, and oh my god so much more. More esoteric items include the toothpaste-squeezer, the girls’ underwear, and a one-of-a-kind crocheted Smurfette who beams with a beatific innocence.
His “inflatables,” such as Smurf-branded inner tubes, were ruined in the attic by the heat of the Missouri summer, he says, along with an entire case of Smurf-shaped SpaghettiOs that tried to pop out of their cans, destroying their resale value, if a can of Smurf-shaped SpaghettiO’s can have a resale value, and of course, in this world of hoarders and collectors, it almost certainly does. Or did.
“Now, even the vitamins smell nasty,” said Rawlings in a resigned tone, reflecting on a small but palpable grief.
His triumphs include a talking scale, which he says is perhaps the rarest item, and a pair of Smurfs rendered in hand-blown Parisian glass, which he reckons is the most valuable.
To stand amidst the entire collection of hundreds of items, which Rawlings says he paid about $2,200 total for (and which he says is now worth about $4,000), is more than a touch disorienting.
And yet, there is more.
Rawlings used to display the entire collection in his bedroom, within his parents’ home. He charged a dollar a head for private tours of his own personal Smurf-verse. Once, in the mid-80s, he said, an entire troop of Girl Scouts paid for the experience.
How, one might ask, does a man aged well beyond boyhood find himself on this path, buying Smurf-themed merchandise at a torrid clip? How does such a thing happen?
“Someone gave me a figurine for my thirtieth birthday,” he explained. “It was ‘Photographer Smurf.’ And I started buying them… and when the show fizzled out in the early ‘90s, suddenly everything was 70 percent off, and I bought even more.”
The fact that he bought it all before the dawn of the Internet, and hence before Ebay, is kind of astounding. I asked Rawlings if he had since gone on Ebay to indulge his passion, but by then, he said, he was no longer collecting Smurfiana. It was all tucked away in boxes in the attic, where the Smurf shapes in the SpaghettiOs cans quietly expired.
And yet the lessons of the Smurf cartoons of the ’80s live on, he says. Rawlings is genuine when he explains that the moral of each episode of the late Saturday morning cartoon moved him.
“Vanity or Jokey Smurf might be hitting each other or doing something bad to each other, then Papa Smurf steps in, and it has a moral ending,” he said. “Papa Smurf was the dad, the leader. They went to him for wisdom and strength. [The Smurfs were called things like] Jokey, Timid, Lazy—if you think about it, they each needed something.”
At one point, imagining that he would lend out some of the videotapes in his collection, Rawlings made an official-looking library slip for each of the tapes. He showed me his copy of a 1983 video called "The Smurfs and the Magic Flute." The library card popped out of the case. It was completely blank—no one had ever checked it out.
Rawlings’ fondness for the Smurfs reminded me of the “Bronies,” a curious subcult of young men who slavishly watch My Little Pony cartoons, collect the figurines, and even create fan art depicting these saccharine-cute horses in Day-Glo colors. Their affinity as adults for a vehicle so clearly aimed at baby-ish young children boggles the mind. And then there’s this guy.
Regardless, the salad days of hunting down a Smurfy item not yet part of his collection and buying it are ancient history. Rawlings, under pressure from his wife, he says (a motivation nearly all male collectors can empathize with), is ready to sell and use the much-needed funds for practical demands.
He does not fear losing his status as one of the world’s pre-eminent Smurf collectors. If you are interested, he says, an opening bid of $2,000 for the entire collection would begin the conversation.
And what of the new film, The Smurfs? What does a man who knows his Smurfs think of this extravagantly cobbled, tardy money-grab?
“It was pretty good,” said Rawlings. “I thought the characters were too different, not like the animation I’m used to, but it was cute.”
Rawlings initially contacted us because we wrote about him in our November, 1985 issue; here's a scan of the original article, and a photogallery of Rawling's collection today.
One-of-a-kind crocheted Smurfette
Keith Rawlings lets his Smurf flag fly
Blown glass smurfs
Rawlings' daughter is not immune to the Smurfiness
