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When I was a kid, Saturday morning was an event. Each week, I’d jump out of bed while everyone else slept in, get dressed up in my favorite outfit, and tiptoe to the family room, where I’d spend the entire morning glued to the TV. Each season, my Saturday morning schedule changed, but the little blue Smurfs were always a staple—even after most kids my age had most likely moved on.
These days, Saturdays tend to be a blur of laundry and errands and other unsmurfy things—so when I saw that a collection of episodes of The Smurfs was coming out on DVD, I couldn’t wait to relive those carefree Saturday mornings.
True Blue Friends contains five cartoons (three full-length cartoons and two short, half-episode cartoons) from the Saturday morning favorite, featuring Brainy, Clumsy, Grouchy, Smurfette, Papa Smurf, and, of course, nasty old Gargamel and his bad-tempered cat, Azrael. In “S-Shivering S-Smurfs,” Tracker Smurf predicts an early winter, but the rest of the Smurfs are too busy enjoying the sunshine to prepare. In “Turncoat Smurf,” Brainy Smurf is accused of helping Gargamel find Smurf Village. And in “The Smurf Who Couldn’t Say No,” Pushover Smurf gets stuck with the preparations for the annual Firefly Festival.
With their simple stories and subtle life lessons, these three episodes bring back fond memories of the smurfy adventures that I used to love as a kid. The animation isn’t anything fancy, but it’s bright and cheery and colorful, filled with giant butterflies and houses made of toadstools. The stories are entertaining, too, and the characters are unforgettable—from smarty-pants Brainy to Jokey and his exploding presents to Grouchy, who hates just about everything. Even villainous Gargamel only adds to the fun.
The disc also includes two episodes that feature the Smurfs’ friends, Johan and Peewee. In “The Haunted Castle,” the Smurfs, along with Johan and Peewee, try to release a ghost from a sorceress’s spell. And in “The Black Hellebore,” they try to foil a plot to overthrow the king.
I never really warmed up to the Smurfs’ human friends—and, all these years later, Johan and Peewee still seem a bit out of place—but I will admit that these two episodes add a different kind of action to the same old Smurf-centric stories. The chases on horseback and perilous poisons also make the episodes a little more exciting for older viewers.
True Blue Friends makes for a fun blast from the past for children of the ‘80s. If you used to look forward to watching The Smurfs on Saturdays as much as I did, you’ll love sharing it with your own kids, too. My only real complaint, then, is that there isn’t more of it. The show ran for nine seasons—over 250 episodes—so this 100-minute collection seems a bit skimpy. But until more of the seasons become available on DVD, well, I’ll smurf what I can get.
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