THURSDAY THIRTEEN

As it happens quite often you are the last one to know what happens in your own country ! Yesterday I was asked by my Canadian Blog friend Tossing Pebbles in the Stream if I would write something about the 50th anniversary of the Smurfs. I was flabbergasted ! I hadn't heard anything about it. I asked my friends, they ignored it too. Finally I found it on the Belgian Homepage !

13 things about the Smurfs

1. This year "The Smurfs" will celebraty their 50 anniversary

2. They were published for the first time in Belgium in a magazine named "Spirou" in 1958.

3. Their creator was Peyo, a Belgian comics artist born in Brussels on 25 juin 1928. His real name was Pierre Culliford

4. He named himself Peyo because his little cousin couldn't pronounce his name Pierre and had called him Payo instead.

5. The merchandising of the Smurfs began in 1959, with the PVC figurines as the most important aspect until the late 1970s.

6. the Smurfs achieved more international success, with a new boom in toys and gadgets. Some of these reached the United States, where Hanna-Barbera created a Saturday morning animated series in 1981.

7. The original name of the Smurfs is the "Schtroumpfs"

8. "Schtroumpf" is an invented word. The pronunciation of "Schtroumpf" in French is quite similar to the German word "Strumpf" (English "sock"), but there is no indication that this is more than a coincidence.

9. According to Peyo, the word came to him as he asked a friend for "salt" during lunch and, struggling to find the word that eluded him, finally managed to say "passe-moi le schtroumpf" ("pass me the smurf").

10. all the characters look quite alike — male, very short (just "three apples tall"), with blue skin, white trousers with a hole for their short tails, and a white hat. Sometimes some additional accessory identifies their personality. (For instance, Handy Smurf wears overalls instead of the standard trousers, a brimmed hat, and a pencil above his ear).

11. The smurfs fulfill simple archetypes of everyday people: Lazy Smurf, Grouchy Smurf, Brainy Smurf, and so on. All smurfs but Papa, Baby, Nanny and Grandpa are said to be 100 years old, and there are normally 100 smurfs (but this number increases as new smurf characters appear: smurflings, Nanny, etc).

12. The Smurfs also speak a special smurf language. The smurfs replace enough nouns and verbs in everyday speech with smurf as to make their conversations barely understandable: "We're going smurfing on the River Smurf today." And I smurf my Thursday Thirteen today.

13. The festivities for this anniversary will start in the next few days in Belgium. A "Schtroumpf" home page in several languages has been opened here.


This is the original version of the Smurf/Schtroumpf song