The Smurfs

Season 7 SABC3 (*193) 06:00 Animation

The Smurfs and their adventures with evil wizard Gargamel and his cat Azrael have been entertaining audiences since the ’80s when the little blue comic characters were turned into an animated hits series (from 1981-1990). But did you know that they’ve actually been around since 1958, when Belgian artist Peyo created De Smurfen?

The Smurfs have generated over 1

$5 billion (R68 billion) of business for Studio Peyo SA, who own the rights.

The series has been translated into 2

30 languages to date and there have been 30 official comic books, 16 of which were drawn by Peyo himself.

There are officially 105 Smurf 3

characters and two girl Smurfs – Smurfette, created in 1966, and Sassette, who appeared in season 5 of the cartoons in 1985.

Smurfette was actually “spelled” 4

into life by Gargamel as a trap for Papa Smurf.

The Smurfs are three apples tall 5

and wear Phrygian caps, popular in Eastern Europe during the ’50s.

To celebrate their 50th anniver6

sary, the Belgian mint produced a limited-edition €5 (R71) coin in 2008. They’re worth over R500 000 if any of the 18 000 lucky collectors wanted to sell their Smurf coins today.

There have been over 20 Smurf 7

videogames since 1982, with the most recent being The Smurfs & Co: Spellbound in 2013 to coincide with the Smurf movies in 2011 and 2013.

Those weren’t the first films to 8

feature the little blue creatures though – Peyo made a black-and-white movie in 1965 featuring five short cartoons. Les Aventures des Schtroumpfs (the French word for the Smurfs) was only released in Belgium.