Smurfs turn 50, celebrate their birthday in Belgium

BRUSSELS, Belgium - The Smurfs — led by Papa Smurf and Smurfette — kicked off a year of 50th birthday celebrations Monday with Smurfberry cake and sasparilla juice.

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.

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