Here's my "I feel old" moment of the day: the Smurfs are celebrating their 50th anniversary.
Yes, the Smurfs. Those little blue creatures that live in a village with one elderly man and one female. They always say things are "smurfy", which means both nothing and anything. Some bizarre full-size man and his cat always want to eat them. This was a hugely popular Saturday morning cartoon in the early 80's (who could forget such classic lines as, "Nature Smurf, this time your love of animals has gone too far.") The toys – mostly immobile hard PVC figurines – were a major collectible among the under 10 set.
The 50th anniversary is of their first appearance in a Belgian comic strip called 'Johan et Pirlouit', or 'Johan and Peewit' in English. Eventually the cartoonist, Peyo, "introduced a new set of characters" to the strip called " Schtroumpf". They eventually became known as The Smurfs. In honor of the 50th anniversary, European celebrities have designed their own Smurfs, which were auctioned off for Unicef, which is, of course, a very smurfy thing to do.
Also of note is the fact that there is much speculation that the Smurfs were (are?) anti-Semitic communists (just like Obama! Kidding). I can't bring myself to summarize this theory, but you can read more about it here if you are interested.
If you want to show your children what you used to watch, you can get the cartoon on DVD. Or you could just wait for the film, which I hope will never actually get made.
Here's the intro to the cartoon if you don't remember it, never saw it, or just need some smurfs in your day:
For some real silliness, here's the SNL bit, "The Smurfette Show" featuring Anna Nicole Smurf. Verrry smurfy.
And here's some Smurfy video of the smurfy auction. If it doesn't smurfing embed, click here.
Sources: MSNBC, Smurf.com, Wikipedia,Happy Smurf Day, and other smurfy sources
Read more:
25 Great Children's TV Shows That Aren't On DVD
