The Smurfs

The Smurfs (syndicated as Smurfs' Adventures) is an animated fantasy-comedy children's television series that originally aired on NBC from 12 September 1981 to 2 December 1989. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, it is based on the Belgian comic series by the same name, created by Belgian cartoonist Peyo (who also served as story supervisor of this adaptation) and aired for 258 episodes with a total of 419 stories, excluding three cliffhangers episodes and seven specials episodes. History In 1976, Stuart R. Ross, an American media and entertainment entrepreneur who saw the Smurfs while traveling in Belgium, entered into an agreement with Editions Dupuis and Peyo, acquiring North American and other rights to the characters, whose original name was "les Schtroumpfs". Subsequently, Ross launched the Smurfs in the United States in association with a California company, Wallace Berrie and Co., whose figurines, dolls and other Smurf merchandise became a hugely popular success. NBC President Fred Silverman's daughter, Melissa, had a Smurf doll of her own that he had bought for her at a toy shop while they were visiting Aspen, Colorado. Silverman thought that a series based on the Smurfs might make a good addition to his Saturday-morning lineup. The Saturday morning cartoon The Smurfs, produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions in association with SEPP International S.A. (from 1981 to 1987) and Lafig S.A. (in the years 1988 and 1989), debuted on NBC at 8:30 AM in 1981. The series became a major success for the network (one of the few hits to emerge from the Fred Silverman era) and one of the most successful and longest running Saturday morning cartoons in television history, spawning seven spin-off television specials on an almost yearly basis. The characters included Papa Smurf, Smurfette, Brainy Smurf, the evil Gargamel, his cat Azrael, and Johan and his friend Peewit. The Smurfs was nominated multiple times for Daytime Emmy Awards and won Outstanding Children's Entertainment Series in 1982–1983. By 1989, the show was in its ninth season and had reached the 200-episode threshold, an extreme rarity when most cartoons were gone after two seasons and 22 episodes (it also far exceeded the typical 65-episode run of a first-run syndicated show of the era). In an effort to come up with new ideas to keep the show fresh, NBC changed the format of the show, taking some of the Smurfs out of the forest and omitting the Smurf Village.