Review for The Smurfs Complete Season One

The Smurfs was a show I used to get up early to watch and I'm not exactly sure why. Was it the simplicity of the stories, the characters, the fact that you could collect them in the local toy shop or the fact that it was such a good cartoon? Created by Hanna-Barbera, you know that this wasn't going to be just a cut and paste nonsense show, however unlike their shows like Scooby Doo, what appealed to me about the Smurfs was the fact that the stories all related back to each other. This is not to say if you haven't watched one episode you won't understand what's going on, but the stories would relate back to previous ones so that if you had watched how Smurfette came to the village or the pranks of Jokey, you can see why the characters react the way they do.
Of course the big appeal of The Smurfs were the characters. It is quite easy to dismiss the Smurfs as rip-offs of the dwarves from Disney's Snow White with simply naming the characters after a characteristic rather than rounding them off fully (Grouchy=Grumpy, Papa Smurf=Doc,Jokey=Dopey, Lazy=Sleepy). Though this has been done on many other shows such as the Poddington Peas, Show People and so on. However, the character I always loved was Gargamel (Voiced by Paul Winchell who most will remember as Dick Dastardly) who much like all great villains, never quit in his quest to destroy The Smurfs and accompanied by his faithful cat Azrael kept coming up with plan after plan to do so. The other thing was of course the smurfy way they would speak. Even though I always thought it odd that the word 'smurf' did not just cover almost every word in the entire sentence I smurfed the way they would smurf the word anywhere so that it could smurf anything without worrying about whether we would smurf it or not. With twenty seven episodes and at over ten hours if you are a fan of the smurfs you will be in smurf heaven at this.
Extras include I Smurf the Smurfs, a seventeen minute documentary on the creation of the TV show and analyse certain elements such as What was under their hats and why they only wore pants (other than Smurfette of course). Though interesting, the people speaking seem a little too over eager about their enthusiasm for the show. Character biographies gives you a short overview of each of the Smurfs, though would have benefited from being allowed to choose which Smurf you read about rather than having scroll through them all to find the one you were after. Smurf Info is an odd scrolling bio of the creation of Smurfs which goes on for twelve minutes and really should have been a screen by screen, chapter-based feature as if you press the wrong button you will have to start all over again or wrestle with the fast forward button to find your last place. However, it is an interesting overview of Peyo's creation of The Smurfs and the characters, stories in general. The other odd extra is the decision to include a full synopsis of every episode on the Select an Episode option. And by 'full' I mean it more or less describes the episode and the outcome and so you wonder why you should watch the episode in the first place.
The Smurfs Season One is a fabulous set to have even if you are not a huge fan of the show. For the younger kids, this is such a simple, fun and entertaining show and for the big kids out there who remember the shows there's still a great amount of entertainment to be had from this set. So what are you smurfing for, go out and smurf it!