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More than two thousand students painted themselves blue and slipped into white costumes to top the world record for the largest number of people dressed up as smurfs, a Guinness World Records adjudicator said Tuesday. The students of Swansea University in Wales beat the previous record of 1,253 people set last year in Ireland by recruiting 2,510 people willing to dress up as the characters created by a Belgian cartoonist 51 years ago.
"It may sound like a joke, but students are very serious about smashing the World Record for the most people dressed as smurfs" the Guinness World Record organization wrote in a statement before the attempt.
The event was partially sponsored by a fancy dress costume seller and strict controls were in place to check that every "smurf" was completely blue.
"There were five adjudicators checking every single smurf and if patches of skin were showing the smurf didn't count," said James Houston, president of the Swansea University Student Union and organizer of the event.
He added that the number would have been even higher if some people had not been allergic to the face paint.
"It was the weirdest experience of my life, being in the middle of a crowd of what looked like cloned smurfs," said Houston, who also donned a smurf outfit -- consisting of a white hat, and a one-piece smurf-suit.
The Student's Union said that the success was just the beginning of a whole series of similar dress-up records which they hope to smash.
