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| Kinder Eggs |
| Kinder eggs are distributed by Ferrero world-wide (except for the US because of safety concerns about the toys inside the eggs). The German term "Kinder" means children, and the eggs were originally intended for children over the age of 3 (again because of safety concerns). When I grew up in Germany, I often found the Kinder Ueberraschungseier (as they are called in Germany meaning Children suprise eggs) near the cash registers in grocery, department and drug stores. They always provided me with a perfect treat. I loved them for their yummy chocolate and the surprise toy in it, and my parents loved to get me one or two of them because they were more inexpensive than other candy. |
| Kinder eggs consist of a thin layer of milk chocolate spread over a thin layer of white chocolate making it a special and very tasty treat for young and old. Inside the chocolate egg is a plastic egg, which contains the toy. |
| The surprise is that you never know which toy you find in there. Ferrero often runs a special series for a limited time. The series consist of popular characters and are highly collectible. They are promised to be found in at least every 7th egg, the others eggs hold other toys which make up a "by series". When the 2008 smurf promotion ran in October/November 2008, I noticed that the smurfs were in the orange eggs and the by series was in the normal light yellow eggs. Of course, you still didn't know which smurf you got until you opened the egg. As with other surprise things, you end up with a lot of doubles and usually come short of one or two characters you need to complete your collection. Kinder toys have a market on their own by now, and are very collectible items. So if you don't get the character you need to complete your series, you can always find it on ebay or among other collectors that are usually more than happy to trade with you. There are also yearly catalogs available that show you all of the toys that were released over the years and their value (some are very valuable) |
| Inside the plastic egg, you find the unassembled toy with the BZP (a paper telling you about the character you just "won" and also showing the other characters of that series). Since the Kinder toys are intended for young children, they are usually easy to assemble, although I |
| Collectors also love to collect displays, dioramas, seller's puzzles that come with the kinder toys as well. Since these items are usually rarer than the toys themselves, they are also more popular and higher valued. |
| Sometimes, Ferrero also releases the so-called Maxi-Eggs, which hold larger toys, or even small playsets. these Maxi Eggs are about twice as tall as the normal eggs and much rarer. |
| Kinder Smurfs |
| Some smurf collectors love the Kinder smurfs because their mold is very different to the Schleich PVCs. Other smurf collectors despise promotions. I, personally, like them and collect them because they are so different, they are cute............and well, I collect everything smurfy :) There are two different kind of Kinder smurfs. The first (and more valuable) sets were the so-called mono blocs. They are smurfs that you don't need to assemble and were made of very hard, unbendable pvc. Later generations of Kinder smurfs needed to be assembled and are much more common and cheaper. There are also a few Kinder smurf playsets available like the train set, windmill and others. Unlike the normal PVC smurfs, there aren't any real variations among the kinder smurfs, which makes it much more likely that you will be able to complete a set. However, since the older generation of kinder smurfs (the Mono Blocs) have become very rare, collecting kinder smurfs can become a very expensive part of your smurf collection. |
| Click here to access my Kinder smurf pages. You will find pictures of the ones I have, and the names of the ones I am still missing. Dragon's Cave is a fabulous website that shows one of the most complete Kinder smurf collections I know of. |
