Okay, I admit… I was into the Smurfs. The little blue guys captured my heart and a good chunk of my allowance as a kid. I owned a stuffed Smurfette and once spent all my birthday money on an entire set of 2-inch tall plastic Smurf figurines that included Papa Smurf, Handy Smurf, Jokey Smurf, Vanity Smurf, Farmer Smurf, Baker Smurf, even Sassette. So when I heard my former blue pals were celebrating the big 5-0 I immediately thought: I’m old!
Fifty years and Smurfette doesn’t look a day over 18. It’s true; I saw her on TV last night helping to kick off the 50th birthday celebrations in Belgium. The party was complete with Smurfberry cake and sasparilla juice. (Apparently, my invivation got lost in the mail.)
If you’ve read this far and have no clue who the Smurfs are you are either much younger than I am or lead a life void of pop culture interferences, and if the latter applies, you obviously have stumbled upon this blog by mistake. But don’t stop reading now… you might just learn a thing or two about the tiny blue charcaters.
The Smurfs were created in 1958 by the late cartoonist Pierre Culliford, who was better known by his pen name, “Peyo.” Culliford dubbed his mini blue friends Schtroumpf and introduced them to the world in a comic strip that became an instant hit. Soon Schtroumpf became known as the Smurfs and the animated world would never be the same.
I got to know the Smurfs when they debuted on American television in 1981. Every Saturday morning (whether they liked it or not) my brothers would join me in front of our family’s only TV to watch the shrunken blue guys go about their business in the Smurf village (made of white-capped mushroom homes) and try to avoid run ins with their nemesis Gargamel.
But the Smurfs were not only popular in my home, they soon became a household name the world over. In Spain a Smurf is a Pitufo; in Germany Smurfs are Schlumpfs; in China they are known as Nam Ching Ling; in Japan they are called Sumafa and in the parts of the world where Hebrew is spoken Smurfs are called Dardassim.
To honor the mark the Smurfs have made on the world in the last five decades, organizers are planning to release a new 3-D animated feature film starring the ageless blue creatures sometime next year. In addition, Smurf fans can look forward to new comic book collection and a remastered version of the popular 1980s television series.
I’m not the only one thrilled about this, right?
Related Articles:
How TV and Movies Have Infiltrated the World of Toys
Red Hot Trends: Bilingual Toys
Could It Be The Next Hula Hoop?