Flashback Friday: The Smurfs All Star Show
Welcome to Smurfland
I do believe this won’t be the only visit that our little blue friends make here at Flashback Friday. I was quite the Smurfy child, if I do say so myself. This inaugural appearance, however, is all about 1981′s The Smurfs All Star Show.
As cheesy as this confession is, this was the only record I ever owned. I was a bit of a sheltered little pup and wasn’t allowed much exposure to popular music until I was on the cusp of teendom. So while all my friends were putting together lovely LP collections that featured Michael Jackson, Sheena Easton, Bon Jovi, Joan Jett, and so forth…all I had were the Smurfs. (Of course, this just meant that I never had to replace my LPs with cassettes…no, no, all I had to do was replace my cassettes with CDs, haha!)
I loved this record. I remember wanting it so desperately that I did everything short of drool whenever I saw the television commercial. I also remember seeing it at the local Safeway and watching as my wonderful father—he of the classical music LP collection that could have made Mozart himself weep from jealousy—went against everything that he cherished about music and placed a copy in our cart. He’s always been my hero in so many ways, and this was just one of the earliest hero moments I can remember.
I also remember playing this damned record so many times that I drove him from the house and into his shed on numerous occasions. Seems to me that every day for at least a solid month, I would wander around the house, record in hand, looking for someone to start up the All Star Show for me. I simply had to get my Smurf on.
Now, I’m not a very outgoing person at all, but I was even less outgoing when I was little. I was interminably shy, in fact, hiding behind my parents’ legs whenever someone tried to speak to me. But this record unleashed the secret performer in me. I would dance around the living room, regardless of who was present, singing along to all the songs at the top of my unfortunately off-key voice (yes, the words were indeed included on the LP sleeve, but by the 10th listen I had those lyrics seared into my brain).
My parents now keep watch over my precious All Star Show, with its cover adorned with poorly drawn generic Smurfs (where’s Vanity? Brainy? Hefty? Smurfette, even?!). I’m actually quite stunned that my dad didn’t take a ball-peen hammer to it once I moved out, seeing as I used to traumatize him every now and again well into my teens by cranking a verse or two of “Space Smurfs” or “Smurfing Land Express” at unexpected times.
Here is the commercial that hooked me completely when I was little. And yes, I can still sing along with every single one of the songs featured in this ad. Oh, and really weird thing? If you slow down the record so that the singers sound normal, they’ve all got English accents. Crazy.
