The Smurfs

The Smurfs (Les Schtroumpfs in French) are a fictional race of small blue creatures who live in a forest somewhere in Europe. The Belgian cartoonist Peyo introduced Smurfs to the world, but English-speakers perhaps know them best through the animated television series from Hanna-Barbera Productions.

Smurf Universe

The Smurfs

The storylines tended to be simple tales of bold adventure. The cast had a simple structure as well: almost all the characters look essentially alike — male, very short (just "three apples tall", a French expression), with blue skin, white trousers with a hole for their short tails, white hat, and some additional accessory that identifies each one's personality. (For instance, Handy Smurf wears overalls instead of the standard trousers). They can walk and run, but often move by skipping on both feet. They love to eat smilax leaves.

Related Topics:
Overalls - Smilax

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The male Smurfs almost never appear without their hats, which leaves a mystery amongst the fans as to whether they have hair or not. According to a canonical source, they are indeed bald: one episode of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon has Greedy Smurf removing his chef's hat to give Papa Smurf a pie he had concealed under it, revealing a bald head.

Related Topics:
Male - Fan - Canonical - Bald - Pie

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The Smurfs fulfill simple archetypes of everyday people: Lazy Smurf, Grouchy Smurf, Brainy Smurf, and so on. All Smurfs are said to be 100 years old, and there are normally 100 Smurfs. (This number increases as new Smurf characters appear.)

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Specific Smurfs include:

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• Papa Smurf, 542 years old, has a bushy white beard, red hat, and trousers. Papa Smurf, as the oldest and therefore the wisest of all Smurfs, officially functions as the leader of the village.
• Smurfette, a female Smurf with more delicate features than the male Smurfs, was chemically created by the sorcerer Gargamel as obnoxious and with stiff, black hair. She was transformed through a spell cast by Papa Smurf, wearing a white dress, white high heels and having long wavy blonde hair (surgery in the comics).
• Baby Smurf (male-gendered) joined the village later, brought in by a stork, which increased the number of smurfs to 101. (The number eventually went higher as more Smurfs appeared.)
• The Smurflings were introduced in the mid-1980s:
• 3 young boys (Slouchy, Snappy, and Nat). Originally, those kids were normal Smurfs from the village, but one day, they went inside a wizard's house under a request by Papa Smurf and then accidentally entered inside a magical grandfather clock. The clock, by a time spell, turned the three Smurfs into children.
• Sassette, a young girl Smurf. She is a redhead with braided hair and wears pink overalls. She was originally magically created like the Smurfette, but by the three kid Smurfs instead of by Gargamel. The three kid Smurfs felt sorry for Smurfette who was lonely as being the sole female in the village, so they broke into Gargamel's mansion and stole the magical recipe book that provided the origin of Smurfette's creation. They then created Sassette from it.
• Grandpa Smurf and Grandma Smurf. Grandpa Smurf, an older version of Papa Smurf, was introduced several years later and was soon followed with a female counterpart. Grandma and Grandpa are original to the animated series and do not appear in the original comics (except in the comic strips in the French "Schtroumpf" magazine).
• Clockwork Smurf, a wooden robot built by Handy Smurf. It is difficult to tell if Clockwork Smurf should count as part of the Smurf population, but considering that he shows real personality and feeling, it seems as if he could.

Smurf Language

Characteristic of Smurfy language is the frequent use of the word "smurf" and derivatives of it in a variety of meanings. The Smurfs replace enough nouns and verbs in everyday speech with smurf as to make their conversations barely understandable. It was implied a number of times that the Smurfs all understood each other due to subtle variations in intonation that Johan or PeeWit (or the viewers) could not detect.

Related Topics:
Noun - Verb

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So that the viewer is able to understand the Smurfs, only some words (or a portion of the word) will be replaced with the word "smurf". Context offers a reliable understanding of this speech pattern, but common vocabulary includes remarking that something is "just smurfy" or "smurftastic".

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The Smurfs even made war among themselves about the use of the "smurf" word: whether to use it as a verb or as a noun. This story is considered as a parody on the taalstrijd (language war) between French and Dutch speaking communities, still present in Belgium.

Related Topics:
War - Parody - Language war

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Smurf Village

The Smurfs live secretive lives, in houses made from mushrooms or houses that just look like mushrooms (often made of stone), somewhere in the middle of a deep forest. Johan and Peewit would make visits, as well as a number of other forest natives.

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List of Smurfs

Actor (fka: Timid), Baby, Barber, Bashful, Brainy (fka: Supersmurf; King Smurf), Clockwork, Clumsy, Cobbler, Dabbler, Dreamy (fka: Astrosmurf), Editor, Farmer, Flighty, Grandpa, Greedy (fka: Master Smurf), Grouchy, Handy, Harmony, Hefty, Jokey, Lazy, Marco, Miner, Nanny, Nat (aka Natural), Nosey, Painter, Papa, Poet, Pushover, Sassette, Sickly, Scaredy, Sloppy, Slouchy, Smurfette, Snappy, Somebody (fka Nobody), Sweepy, Tailor, Timber, Toughy, Tracker, Vanity, Weakling, Weepy, Wild, Wooley.

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See Characters in the Smurfs.

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