The Worst Kept Secret
The news of the Smurfs release on DVD was supposed to come out yesterday, but Warner Home Video themselves leaked it before. It was in the recently released Popeye DVD, they were handing out temporary tattoos at Comic-Con announcing it and finally, TV Shows on DVD had the above box art on August 2nd. I’ve known about this for a long time, but the company is making me sign non-disclosure agreements now, so I can’t tell you about upcoming releases ahead of time any more.
What I can tell you is the contents of this set and why the box says 19 cartoons (if you follow the TV Shows on DVD link, you can see a larger version of the art).
Season One originally aired as an hour, two eleven minute episodes and one full half-hour story. But as early as Show #3, they began repeating cartoons. Show #3 has “Vanity Fare” which was also in Show #1. It didn’t make sense to release 21 hours of Smurfs (the number of Season One episodes) with a lot of repeats in them, so they are in the order of the original hours, but without duplicates. Here is the list by disc:
DISC ONE:
1 The Smurf’s Apprentice
2 The Smurfette
3 Vanity Fare
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4 King Smurf
5 The Astrosmurf
6 Jokey’s Medicine
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7 St. Smurf and the Dragon
8 Sorcerer Smurf
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9 The Smurfs and the Howlibird
DISC TWO:
10 The Magical Meanie
11 Bewitched, Bothered and Be-Smurfed
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12 Smurf-Colored Glasses
13 Dreamy’s Nightmare
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14 Fuzzle Trouble
15 Soup A La Smurf
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16 All That Glitters Isn’t smurf
17 Romeo and Smurfette
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18 The Hundredth Smurf
19 Smurphony in ‘C’
The lines between the titles denote what would have been each original hour show, 1 - 9. No word yet on whether these will contain main and end titles. I’ll Smurf you in when I find out. (Sheesh… I can’t believe I just wrote that.)