BELGIUM: Smurfs stay strong 50 years on

Record ID: 724789

  • Title: BELGIUM: Smurfs stay strong 50 years on
  • Date: 26th October 2008
  • Summary: BRUSSELS, BELGIUM (FILE - JANUARY 14, 2007) (REUTERS) AT NEWS CONFERENCE, HENDRIK COYSMAN, CHAIRMAN IMPS (INTERNATIONAL MERCHANDISING PROMOTION & SERVICES) AND HOLDER OF SMURF LICENSING RIGHTS, ADDRESSING AUDIENCE (SOUNDBITE) (English) HENDRIK COYSMAN, CHAIRMAN IMPS (INTERNATIONAL MERCHANDISING PROMOTION & SERVICES) AND HOLDER OF SMURF LICENSING RIGHTS, SAYING: ''There h
  • Embargoed: 10th November 2008 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Belgium
  • Country: Belgium
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVAAPTA07740XZJFRD58HERN1HTH
  • Story Text: It's 50 years to the day that the first Smurfs were published.
    The Smurfs, tiny and happy blue creatures that hooked many a generation of young children, were spawned from the imagination of Pierre Culliford, who signed himself as Peyo.
    They first appeared in a comic book version on October 23, 1958, exactly 50 years to the day, on the pages of another now cult comic strip magazine known as Spirou.
    It took another 20 years or more before the cartoons were produced.
    Peyo died in 1992 but the Smurfs live on thanks to a team of cartoonists who regularly publish new adventures.
    Smurfs are just three apples tall and do little more than forage for food or repair broken damns, but they still manage to generate an income of around 4 billion U.S. dollars (USD) a year and collect between 5 to 12 million USD in royalties for publications in over 30 languages.
    The Smurfs have their own language in which they replace every possible word or verb with 'Smurf'.
    In an old video shown at a news conference in Brussels at the start of the anniversary year, Peyo is seen explaining that he came up with the word 'Smurf' during a conversation with another Belgian cartoonist, Andre Franquin, creator of the lovable goofy genius 'Gaston Lagaffe', because he couldn't remember how to say 'salt'. Franquin answered back by morphing other words into Smurf and it just caught on.
    ''With Franquin, I had found the word 'Smurf' when I asked him to give me the salt, you know the story, because I couldn't find the exact word and instead of staying thing or thingumajig or whatsit, I asked him to give me the smurf. And he said 'Here is your smurf, thanks for smurfing it, when I don't need it anymore I will smurf it back to you. We thoroughly enjoyed playing with the word,'' Peyo says.
    There have been Smurf commemorations all year round in Brussels for the 50th anniversary including a new comic series, statuettes, an exhibition at Brussels' cartoon museum, a set of commemorative stamps.
    Blonde haired Smurfette, originally created by evil sorcerer Gargamel to foster jealous rivalry in the community, has been the single love interest for almost every other Smurf for years. This will change in the near future.
    ''There have been dramatic changes in the socio-cultural values in the past twenty or twenty five years. One of these is girl empowerment. So, there will be more female presence within the smurf village and this will is of course be a basis for new stories and this will probably turn upside down certain traditional situations within the village,'' Hendrik Coysman, head of Smurf rights holder IMPS, announced.
    Thierry Culliford, Peyo's 52-year-old son, is confident the Smurfs will never go out of fashion.
    ''We have this chance that the Smurfs are timeless. They live in the Middle Age so they are fixed in one period. They don't live in the fifties, sixties, seventies or eighties so the clothing or the looks don't change. And I think they don't go out of fashion because after fifty years, we see that it's still popular with children who are ten years old, or five or six or seven now.'' Today's children still love the Smurfs.
    ''Because they are blue and I like the colour!'' Sunny said.
    ''There are two who make jokes: the Smurfette and the one who makes jokes with gifts...'' Romain explained.
    International Merchandising Promotion and Services (IMPS) SA has teamed up with Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom <VIAb.N>, to produce a computer-animated 3-D style movie.
    Coysman also hopes to come up with new series of 26 half-hour episodes to add to the ones made by Hanna-Barbera 1980s.
    And for those of you who have missed out all this time here is what we are talking about: ''I am very smurfed to be with you and I smurf a lot of good things to you. Happy new year, Happy new Smurf !,'' Culliford says.
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