Since I haven’ been posting a lot lately, and because it’s Christmas after all, here’s a bit of a treat. In 1980, the Smurfs were the official mascot for the Belgian Olympic team for the Moscow Summer Olympics. On that occasion the Coca Cola Company organised a huge campaign featuring the Smurfs. They commissioned a special Olympic Smurf figurine and had an exclusive free album made (which was later reprinted in the series) which you could get when you collected tokens from 1 liter bottles.
The main treat, however, were the special bottle caps they put on the 20 cl bottles. For a while, these featured a total of thirty different Smurf images, which you collect on a special folder (there were also thirty caps featuring Belgian athletes, but those weren’t that much in demand. We normally never had Coke in our house, but I distinctly remember that for a few short months, our house was flooded with bottle caps. Our fingers bled from prying off the soft foam shield in the caps, and from separating the singles from the doubles. The Equestrian Sports Smurf was the most difficult to find. And when we finally did find it, we immediately lost interest. Ah, kids…
And then the folder disappeared until only recently I found it again.  I tried to scan it, but wasn’t able to have the scanner focus on the insides of the caps. And so I took some photographs, which aren’t great, but you can still make out the details. Enjoy, and happy Christmas !
(click on the images above for larger versions, and read on for more detailed photographs – beware however, the files are quite large)
Mijn god! Die had ik vroeger ook! En wij hadden normaal ook nooit Cola in huis, maar die dopjes, die moest ik hebben! Bedankt voor de leuke herinnering Wim! 🙂