Walt Disney, (1901-1966) animator, filmmaker, amusement park developer
From the Wall Street Journal:
Belgium is known for a lot of things, including waffles and an array of skull-crushingly strong beers that would make even a much-larger nation proud. Oddly, another product of this bastion of biculturalism is the surprisingly homogenous group of blue-skinned gnomes known as Schtroumpf, which, in American, is translated as the Smurfs. The Associated Press reports that 2008 is the 50th anniversary of these
mushroom dwellers.The Smurfs originally surfaced as supporting characters in a 1958 cartoon called "Johan and Pirlouit," which was set in the Middle Ages and drawn by Pierre Culliford, a cartoonist who went by the pen name "Peyo."
In Spanish, a Smurf is a Pitufo. The Gerrmans call them Schlumpfs. They're Nam Ching Ling in China and, in Japan, one of the little guys -- or Smurfette -- is a Sumafa. They're called Dardassim in Hebrew.
3 comments:
When my sister and I were little we used to climb into my parents bed on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons on the little TV and the Smurfs were always green.
I always knew you were deprived as a child.
Incoidentally, my friends and I all played with Smurf figurines back in the late 70s/early 80s... I can remember entire weekends with Keir and Melanie dedicated to the trials and travails of Jokey, Hefty, Grouchy, Brainy...
I was a bit perturbed recently when online scrabble, which is becoming a bit of an addiction of mine, wouldn't let me put down "Smurf" as a word. What's up with that??
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