Smurfs all around

Impossible not to notice the smurfs these days. They are simply EVERYWHERE... on the street, in the shops, in magazines,  on television, in the grocery stores... on trucks. They appear on t-shirts, on ready-to-go-to-school material, on dollhouses, toys. There are smurfs figurines, dollhouses, smurf facebook fan groups, breakfast cereals. The smurfs even have their official website:  http://www.smurf.com/smurf.php/www/home/en


Parents stand in line in the grocery store to collect as many stamps as possible on their "fidelity cards". The goal is to get the card stamped at the cash register because a full card  gives the customer the right to choose a figurine.

I thought the smurfs were a thing of the past because they appeared in magazines a long time ago, at the end of the 1950's,  and kids growing up in the 1980's remember them from the Sunday TV programs.

The cause of this renewed Smurfmania is the release of the full-length feature film, The Smurfs Movie 3D.

Why am I talking about this? Well, I got a photograph of this colorful truck... and the Smurfs' creator was Belgium's Pierre Culliford - better known as Peyo (25 June 1928 – 24 December 1992). In order to be totally fair though, I must add that, as his name might suggest, his father was English, his mother was Belgian.