I bet you didn’t realize that last week the Smurfs turned 68 years old! Me neither until my baby boomer husband stumbled across this information and reminisced about how his millennial children loved the show in the 1980s. As an older member of Generation X, I was into my early teenage years and more into pop music and make up by the time the Hanna- Barbera TV series launched in the UK in late 1981, a few months after it began in the USA and the show ran on both continents until 1989.

So how did the story of the famous blue Smurfs begin? The creator of this phenomenon, Pierre Culliford was born in Brussels in 1928, the son of a British father and a Belgian mother. When he was seven years old, his father unexpectedly died, putting a major strain on the family finances.

At the age of 15, at the height of the Second World War, he was forced to quit school and got a job as a projectionist in a Brussels cinema for the remainder of the war.

After war ended in 1945, he worked briefly for an animation studio and then seemed to settle into a career drawing illustrations for advertisements, selling chocolate, washing powder, banking services and more. But in his spare time, he enjoyed working on cartoons and comics, eventually authoring weekly comic strips for newspapers. In 1952, one of his comics was picked up by the popular weekly European comic magazine “Spirou”. He became known to the world as “Peyo”, a family nickname. Peyo realized some early success with the running comic “Johan and Peewit”, an adventure series about Johan, a brave and heroic medieval knight always fighting for justice, and his friend Peewit, a scheming but faithful sidekick who was a “wild but non-magical dwarf ”. Then, in the comic published exactly 68 years ago today, Johan and Peewit encountered a group of strange, mystical blue gnomes who were “three apples high”.

Peyo called them “Les Schtroumpfs”, a word that he made up one day while having dinner with a friend and couldn’t remember the word for ‘salt’, so he said, “Pass the Schtroumpf”.

These little characters made their print debut on 23 October 1958 and very quickly became the star of the series, and moved onto much greater things. By the way, the Dutch pronunciation of Peyo’s original French nonsense word ‘Les Schtroumpfs’ is ‘De Smurfen’ which, of course, is now ‘The Smurfs’ to most of the world.

Peyo’s wife, who was in charge of colorizing his black and white cartoons, thought red was “too fierce” and that pink was “too human”, so she decided to give the Smurfs blue skin with white pants and caps so they would stand out from the predominantly green forest.

Their leader ‘Le Grand Schtroumpf ’, who became Papa Smurf, was given a beard and red shirt. They all lived in Smurf Village in their mushroom houses.

From an original six Smurf characters, over the years the cast grew to over 100, as Brainy Smurf, Hefty Smurf, Jokey Smurf, Sleepy Smurf, Greedy Smurf, Grouchy Smurf, and dozens more were introduced. Initially the village was all male except for Smurfette, but over the years Peyo introduced a number of female Smurfs including Sassette Smurfling, Smurfblossom, Smurfwillow, and Smurfette’s sister, Smurfpetal.

The world the Smurfs live in is a magical, secret place centered around Smurf Village, set hidden in a forest, although in more modern storylines some of them live in Smurf Acres, which has golf courses and swimming pools. Smurf society is based on a system of cooperation, where each Smurf contributes to the community based on their unique skills. Their peaceful existence is often threatened by external magical forces, most notably the evil wizard Gargamel and his cat, Azrael, who are often trying to capture the Smurfs to either eat them or turn them into gold. Smurf language seems to be all about using the word ‘Smurf ’ as much as possible, and it looks to me like it can be a noun, verb, adjective or pronoun.

So how successful were the Smurfs?

Over the past seven decades they have become truly a global, cultural icon initially moving from a comic strip into TV, several major movies, songs and recordings, an ice capades tour, video games, toys, Macy’s parade floats, kids’ cereals, and branded products of all kinds. There are Smurf theme parks in Korea, China, Dubai, Germany and Spain, as well as Texas and North Carolina. It has been a busy year for the Smurfs with a new movie and the Smurf Experience traveling show touring Europe and North America The Smurfs have over 17 million followers on social media, and the magazine License Global recently said that the Smurfs have an amazing 95% global awareness, have been translated into 55 languages, and currently have over 700 licensed products on the market. Smurf movies have grossed over $1 billion, and by most accounts Smurfs have been one of the most successful media franchises in history.

There is a lot more information at www.smurf.com and www.peyo.company. com.

I say goodbye with the opening narration of the 2011 Paramount movie The Smurfs: “There is a place. A place that knows no sadness, where even feeling blue is a happy thing. A place inhabited by little blue beings three apples high. It lies deep within an enchanted forest, hidden away beyond the medieval village. Most people believe this place is made up, only to be found in books or children’s imagination. Well, we beg to differ.”

God Bless America! Lesley grew up in London, England and made Georgia her home in 2009. She can be contacted at lesley@lesleyfrancispr.com or via her PR and marketing agency at www.lesleyfrancispr. com.