Far, far away, in a little mushroom village, live a group of little blue pixies called Smurfs who wear short trousers and white bonnets. Only as tall as three apples, they speak in 'Smurf', a language that only they understand. The Smurfs are carefree, peaceful creatures that live in harmony with nature. But they have a nasty habit of wanting to act like man, which causes them 1,001 problems...

The Smurfs: Complete 4th Season contains another 28 Smurfy episodes, which represents the show's fourth season. Each episode runs for 22 minutes with about half of these split into two different stories of 11 minutes each. The episodes on this four disc collection were originally broadcast between September and November 1984. Once again, the episodes aren't in their original broadcast order, but this shouldn't be a problem for most people.

There's more of a move to introduce new characters (like the Pussy Willow Pixies, Blue Eyes the flying miniature pony and the bickering married wizard and witch) which helps to give the stories more scope than the usual plot of Gargamel attempting to catch the Smurfs.

Highlights in this collection include:

Jokey's Shadow: Jokey's shadow comes alive and starts playing tricks on all the Smurfs - including Jokey.

The Incredible Shrinking Wizard: Gargamel begins to shrink and heads to the Smurfs for help. It soon becomes clear that when he performs a bad act he shrinks more, but when he performs a good act he starts to grow again. Doing good deeds doesn't come natural to Gargamel and every time he's almost back to normal he manages to do another wicked deed.

A Pet for Baby Smurf: All the Smurfs get pets, including Smurfette who calls her caterpillar "Fuzzy". This leads to a rather unfortunate bit of dialogue where she loses him and asks any Smurf within earshot: "Have you seen my Fuzzy".

Smurfette's Sweet Tooth: The annual smurfberry candy is produced, with each smurf having a quota to last them the whole year. But Smurfette troughs hers in a day and then sets off to try and beg, steal and borrow from the other Smurfs.

Tailor's New Needle: Brainy uses magic to create an enchanted needle that can help Tailor make more clothes. But it soon puts Taylor out of a job... until everyone realises that the same love and attention to detail isn't going into the sewing.

Petrified Smurfs: When the Smurfs are turned to stone a young boy tries to help. This episode has dated quite a little and sees a bickering wizard and witch couple calling each other "cow" and "pig".

Lazy's Slumber Party: The Smurfs throw Lazy a surprise slumber party. This pleases lazy, until he learns that the last thing you do at a slumber party is sleep - in fact you stay awake all night.

Smurf Box Derby: Handy invents the car, which causes chaos with every smurf having their own vehicle.

The Smurf-Walk Cake: Greedy and Handy manage to make Smurf Cream (ice cream). When they fall out they both decide to go into business making it themselves, but without the other, neither's version is very good. This episode has some odd dialogue. For example, Greedy Smurfs says: "Smurfette can't live without my Smurfberry Bang Bang!" He also says, to Handy: "My Smurfberry Bang Bang isn't the same without you"

Big Mouth Smurf: Gargamel turns Big Mouth blue and convinces him he's a Smurf. When he heads off to the Smurf Village he causes havoc trying to fit in.

Extras are identical to the previous season box set extras: I Smurf the Smurfs (16 min, 43 sec feature that interviews z-list celebrity fans and experts about the Smurfs. There are also interviews with cast and crew from the series); Character Biographies (text based); and Smurf Info (12 min text based featurette where text, that covers just about every aspect of The Smurfs, scrolls up the screen).

So, another entertaining season that retails at an affordable price. This will keep the littlest member of the household entertained for hours.

7

Darren Rea