The Smurfs

The Smurfs is an American-Belgian animated-fantasy comedy children's television series that aired on NBC from September 12, 1981 to December 2, 1989. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, it is based on the Belgian comic series of the same name, created by Belgian cartoonist Peyo (who also served as story supervisor of this adaptation) and aired for 256 episodes with a total of 418 stories, excluding three cliffhanger episodes and seven specials.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) The show is faithful to the source material, despite the violence being toned down due to TV regulations.
 * 2) Memorable characters such as Papa Smurf, Brainy Smurf, Smurfette, Gargamel and Azrael.
 * 3) Wonderfully lush and classical music scores.
 * 4) The animation improves from Season 6 and onwards, when Hanna-Barbera began to farm their animation work overseas.
 * 5) Good writing and slapstick humor.
 * 6) The voice acting is top-notch.
 * 7) It has its own trademark theme song, "la-la-la-la-la-la" (A.K.A. The Smurf Song), despite it being super annoying.
 * 8) The show rescued Hanna-Barbera from making any more shameless Scooby-Doo rip-offs, which were already done in the 1970s.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The theme song is super annoying, and it can get on your nerves sometimes.
 * 2) NBC changed the format of the show for the ninth season, switching the premise of Smurf Village to that of time traveling in a similar fashion to The Time Tunnel. However, the viewers were not amused with the change and the show was cancelled thereafter.
 * 3) Smurfette's crying sound "boo-hoo", and sometimes even her voice.
 * 4) Some fans felt that the show was going downhill, when The Smurflings and Puppy were introduced in the fifth season.
 * 5) A few animation errors may occur (Papa Smurf's pants are miscolored white, Greedy's hat is misdrawn as a regular Smurf hat, animating a character to the wrong voice, etc.).
 * 6) Some terrible episodes, such as "Clumsy Luck".