This week we thought it would be a good idea to have a little critters match up! So who better than The Smurfs from Smurf Village vs. The Fraggles from Fraggle Rock! If we can have a fight, it would be the last little critter standing! We have to assume that the Smurfs are about 3 apples high, and the Fraggles are just a little bit taller then that! So with all that said, here is some history backgrounds on our little critters:
Smurfs
The Smurfs (French: Les Schtroumpfs) (Dutch: De Smurfen) is a Belgian comic and television franchise centered on a fictional colony of small blue creatures who live in mushroom-shaped houses in the forest. The Smurfs was first created and introduced as a series of comic characters by the Belgian comics artist Peyo (pen name of Pierre Culliford) in 1958, where they were known as Les Schtroumpfs. There are more than one hundred Smurf characters, and their names are based on adjectives that emphasize their characteristics, such as “Jokey Smurf”, who likes to play practical jokes on his fellow smurfs. “Smurfette” was the first female Smurf to be introduced in the series. The Smurfs wear Phrygian caps, which came to represent freedom during the modern era.
The word “Smurf” is the original Dutch translation of the French “Schtroumpf”, which, according to Peyo, is a word invented during a meal with fellow cartoonist André Franquin, when he could not remember the word salt.
The Smurfs franchise began as a comic and expanded into advertising, films, TV series, ice capades, video games, theme parks, and dolls.
At the time he came up with the creative idea for the Smurfs, Peyo was the creator, artist, and writer of the Franco-Belgian comics series titled Johan et Pirlouit (translated to English as Johan and Peewit), set in Europe during the Middle Ages and including elements of sword-and-sorcery. Johan serves as a brave young page to the king, and Pirlouit (pronounced Peer-loo-ee) functions as his faithful, if boastful and cheating, midget sidekick. In 1958, Spirou magazine started to publish the Johan et Pirlouit story La Flûte à six trous (“The Flute with Six Holes”). The adventure involved them recovering a magic flute, which required some sorcery by the wizard Homnibus. In this manner, they met a tiny, blue-skinned humanoid creature in white clothing called a “Schtroumpf”, followed by his numerous peers who looked just like him, with an elderly leader who wore red clothing and had a white beard. Their first full appearance was published in Spirou on October 23, 1958. The characters proved to be a huge success, and the first independent Smurf stories appeared in Spirou in 1959, together with the first merchandising. The Smurfs shared more adventures with Johan and Pirlouit, got their own series and all subsequent publications of the original story were retitled La Flûte à six Schtroumpfs
Schtroumpf is pronounced like the German word “Strumpf” meaning “sock”. However, according to Peyo, original author of the original Smurfs comic strip, the original term and the accompanying language of the Smurfs came during a meal he was having with his colleague and friend André Franquin at the Belgian Coast. Having momentarily forgotten the word “salt”, Peyo asked him (in French) to pass the schtroumpf. Franquin jokingly replied: “Here’s the Schtroumpf—when you are done schtroumpfing, schtroumpf it back…” and the two spent the rest of that weekend speaking in “schtroumpf language”. The name was later translated into Dutch as Smurf, which was adopted in English.
With the commercial success of the Smurfs came the merchandising empire of Smurf miniatures, models, games, and toys. Entire collecting clubs have devoted themselves to collecting PVC Smurfs and Smurf merchandise.
The storylines tend to be simple tales of bold adventure. The cast has a simple structure as well: almost all the characters look essentially alike—mostly male (a few female Smurfs have appeared: Smurfette, Sassette, and Nanny Smurf), short (three apples high),with blue skin, white trousers with a hole for their short tails, white hat in the style of a Phrygian cap, and sometimes some additional accessory that identifies a personality (for example, “Handy Smurf” wears overalls instead of the standard trousers, a brimmed hat, and a pencil above his ear). Smurfs can walk and run, but often move by skipping on both feet. They love to eat sarsaparilla (a species of Smilax) leaves, whose berries the Smurfs naturally call “smurfberries” (the smurfberries appear only in the cartoon; in the original comics, the Smurfs only eat the leaves from the sarsaparilla).
The Smurfs fulfill simple archetypes of everyday people: “Lazy Smurf”, “Grouchy Smurf”, “Brainy Smurf”, and so on. All Smurfs, with the exception of Papa, Baby, Smurfette, Nanny and Grandpa, are said to be 100 years old. There were originally 99 Smurfs, but this number increased as new Smurf characters appeared, such as Sassette and Nanny. All of the original Smurfs were male; later female additions are Smurfette and Sassette—Smurfette being Gargamel’s creation, while Sassette was created by the Smurflings.
Papa Smurf is the leader of the community. Other Smurfs are generally named after their personality disposition, for example, Brainy, Greedy, Vanity, Lazy, Clumsy, Hefty, Jokey, Dreamy, Grouchy, or their profession, for example, Poet, Actor, Handy, Harmony, Farmer, Clockwork, Painter, Tailor, Miner, Architect, Reporter, Timber, Barber and Doctor Smurf. The first female Smurf, Smurfette, was created by Gargamel to lure the other Smurfs. Papa Smurf then changed her into what we see today. The non-Smurf characters who would appear later would include their enemies the wizard Gargamel, his cat Azrael, an ugly witch, Hogatha and Gargamel’s godfather Balthazar; and their friends the page Johan and his young friend Peewit and the wizard Homnibus. There are 105 Smurfs.
Fraggles
Fraggle Rock (also known as Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock or Fraggle Rock with Jim Henson’s Muppets) is a British/American/Canadian children’s live action puppet television series created by Jim Henson, about a society of Muppet creatures called Fraggles.
Fraggle Rock was co-produced by British television company Television South (TVS), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, U.S. pay television service Home Box Office and Henson Associates. Unlike Sesame Street, which had been created for a single market and later adapted for international markets, Fraggle Rock was intended from the start to be an international production and the whole show was constructed with this in mind.
Fraggle Rock debuted in 1983 as one of the first shows involving the collaboration of Henson International Television (HiT Entertainment from 1989), the international arm of Jim Henson Productions and of Deluxe Digital Studios. The co-production brought together British regional ITV franchise-holder Television South (TVS), CBC Television, United States pay-television service Home Box Office and Henson Associates (later Jim Henson Productions). Filming took place on a Toronto sound-stage (and later at Elstree Studios, London). The avant-garde poet bpNichol worked as one of the show’s writers. In the early days of development, the script called the Fraggles “Woozles” pending the devising of a more suitable name.
Henson described the Fraggle Rock series as “a high-energy, raucous musical romp. It’s a lot of silliness. It’s wonderful.” While the program proved accessible to audiences of all ages, it used the fantasy creatures as an allegory to deal with serious issues such as prejudice, spirituality, personal identity, the environment, and social conflict.
In 2009, as part of the Jim Henson Foundation’s donation of puppets to the Center for Puppetry Arts, the Atlanta museum displayed many of the original puppet characters from Fraggle Rock in their exhibition Jim Henson: Wonders from his Workshop.
There are three main intelligent anthropomorphic species in the Fraggle Rock environment: Fraggles, Doozers and Gorgs. The Fraggles and Doozers live in a system of natural caves called Fraggle Rock that are filled with all manner of creatures and features, and which connect to at least two different areas (the one of the Gorgs and the one of the “silly creatures”, or humans). One of the main themes of the series is that, although the three species depend on the other for their survival, they usually fail to communicate due to vast differences in their biology and culture. The series mainly follows the adventures of five Fraggles: Gobo, Mokey, Red, Wembley, and Boober, each with distinct personalities.
Wow, thats a lot of smurfing information! Damn, I feel like I just got a smurfing education! Sure is a lot of smurf. Okay, I think i said the word, “SMURF” enough. What are your thoughts on the fight? Who would be the last one or ones standing? We want to know what’s on your mind. Comment below, and click on the poll for the one you would like to see win! Want to hear us talk and argue our points on who we would think would win? Well now you can. Go to podcastunlimited.com and go to our archive section and either listen to or download episode 82!
What the Smurf!!!!!
The Engineer!