The Smurfs celebrate their 50th Smurfday.

50?? Get the smurf out of here! From BBC:

The Smurfs celebrate their 50th birthday this week with a feature-length movie and new television series in the making. But what makes the blue goblin-like creatures so popular?

It doesn't sound like the most promising of creative pitches - the adventures of a cartoon tribe of bright blue elves from Belgium who lived in mushroom houses in the Middle Ages. But that, in a nugget, is what the Smurfs are about. And half a century after they emerged, the Smurfs are still finding new fans.

[...] The Smurfs were the creation of cartoonist Pierre Culliford, known as Peyo, and made their first appearance in a 1958 edition of Belgian comics magazine Le Journal de Spirou. From the start, it was a big cast list, with 101 different Smurfs - although just one was female.

They soon secured their own comic series, which ended up being translated in 25 different languages and is estimated to have sold 25 million copies worldwide.

But, unsurprisingly, it took American involvement - in the shape of a Hanna-Barbera TV cartoon series - to catapult the Smurfs on to the global stage. In Britain, at least, they were pushing at an open door. Sandwiched between Police 5 and reruns of Happy Days on ITV during Sunday lunch times, there was little else on TV to hold the attention of anyone under 35 years old.

The series recounted the adventures of Papa Smurf and his fellow Smurfs as they try to survive the evil plots of the (human) wizard Gargamel. They lived in the aforementioned mushroom houses and, inexplicably, peppered their conversation with the word "smurf". Their favourite snack was the plant sarsaparilla.