Anniversary Smurf
Manufacturer: Schleich
Anniversary Smurf
Celebrates 50yrs of smurfs.The late cartoonist Pierre Culliford -- best known by his pen name, "Peyo" -- first introduced the tiny blue figures in a comic strip in October 1958. He called them Schtroumpf; they became known worldwide as the Smurfs. The Smurfs, forest dwellers who live in little white-capped mushroom homes, developed their own "Smurf" language in which nouns and verbs were interchanged. To mark 50 years of Smurfdom, organizers are planning everything from a 3-D animation feature film expected to be released next year to new comic book collections and a remastered release of the popular 1980s television animated series,