Created by Belgian cartoonist Peyo (Pierre Culliford), the SMURFS are an iconic franchise centered on a fictional colony of small, blue, human-like creatures who live in mushroom-shaped houses in the forest. Each Smurf is named after some adjective and whose attributes are embodied by that adjective. What began as a comic has expanded into advertising, films, TV series, ice capades, video games, theme parks, and figurines. The best known and most widely available Smurf figurines are those made by Schleich. The Smurfs secured their place in North American pop culture in 1981 with their Hanna-Barbera produced Saturday-morning cartoon series, THE SMURFS. There was a resurgence in popularity tied to a pair of live-action/computer-animated films from Sony in 2011 and 2013. A fully-animated reboot film, SMURFS: THE LOST VILLAGE, was released in 2017, revealing a whole new village of previously unseen Smurfs. Ultimately begun as a comic property internationally, the Smurfs have enjoyed continued international publication since 1958. American comic book audiences were introduced to Smurf comics in 1982 with a 3-issue mini-series from Marvel. Since August 2010, Papercutz has been issuing volumes of translated Smurfs comics for American audiences.
