"The Smurf Flute" is an episode from the 1961 Smurfs cartoon show.
Characters[]
Plot Summary[]
Jokey leaves the warehouse with his tools and headed towards the forest. He wants to make a flute for himself. After walking in the forest for a while, Jokey found a tall tree and stopped. Jokey then uses his axe to cut the tree down and after a while, Jokey has nearly finished cutting. However, the core of the tree is too hard and the tree does not fall down. Jokey tries to push the tree at first to make it fall, but he fails. Then he tries to kick it, but since the core is too hard, his foot is very painful after kicking. Though it is painful, but it works. The tree falls down but unluckily, the tree hits Jokey and knocks him down. Jokey soon escapes from the collapsed tree and cuts the wood. After some hard work, the flute is finally done and he plays it for a short moment. Then Jokey returns to the village. Back to the village, Jokey awakes Papa Smurf and decides to perform a song with the flute to him. Though when he hears the flute’s sound, he immediately dances around. Jokey soon runs away and hides behind a barrel since this may make Papa Smurf angry. As he runs away, Papa Smurf returns to normal again and tries to find out who is disturbing him, but he cannot catch a glimpse of the disturber.
Back to Jokey, he is surprised that the flute can make the other dance around when playing it. He realized that the flute has some strange powers and decides to play some tricks on the other Smurfs, just like what he did to Papa Smurf before.
Meanwhile, a Smurf passes by and he was holding two buckets of water. Jokey plays the flute again and the Smurf suddenly dances around uncontrollably. When Jokey finishes playing, the Smurf with buckets has already fallen down with a bucket on his head and all the water has spilled on the floor. Jokey then goes to find his next target. He later finds a Smurf painting a house’s wall and plays the flute again. Eventually, a Smurf who is painting the house dances around and finally jumped into a bucket of paint with his body all wet. After that, Jokey sees a Smurf on a ladder and he plays the flute for another time. Same to the previous Smurfs, a Smurf dances around and falls down from the ladder. Jokey burst into laughter after seeing it. Next, he plays the flute to two Smurfs who are building a fence and they dance around. After he finishes playing, they are very exhausted. Jokey then walks to Painter's hut. At the moment, Painter is painting a picture for a Smurf. Jokey plays his flute and both Painter and the Smurf dance in the hut. During dancing, Painter ruined the painting and they are very angry. Painter walks towards the window to find out what is going on and sees Jokey. Jokey tries to escape but it is too late. The Smurf blamed him for making them dance uncontrollably, but before he finishes, Jokey plays his flute and the Smurf dance once again with bumping his head on the window frame. Finally, the Smurf passes out and Jokey leaves. Jokey soon plays his flute again and this time, the victim is a Smurf who is carrying a stack of dishes. The Smurf dances around and all his dishes are tossed up to the aired. The Smurf tries to catch them and many of them are broken into pieces. To make things worse, the broken pieces hurt his foot and he jumps around with pain. Jokey also plays his flute to a Smurf who is lifting up a barrow. The Smurf dances and the barrow fall down plus hitting him.
Finally, Jokey finds Lazy and wants to play the flute to him. However, it does not work as Lazy is sleeping with his earplugs on his ears. He walks closer to him and plays again. Still, nothing happens. Jokey soon leaves as he has failed. Meanwhile, he hears some noise. He looks backwards and finds out that many Smurfs are rushing towards him. They all want to teach him a lesson since he has pranked on others too much with his flute. At the moment, Jokey immediately plays the flute again and everyone (except Lazy) is dancing. He keeps on playing until the other Smurfs become tired and fall down.
Dancing is always a good way to keep enemies away.
Jokey is saved from being punished by the other Smurfs, but he is very tired after playing the flute for a long time. At the same time, Lazy wakes up and walks towards him and he is very surprised. Lazy takes away Jokey's flute and he asked Lazy why he does not dance around. Lazy puts off the earplugs and tells him that he was wearing earplugs when sleeping. Jokey then passes out at the end.
Trivia[]
- This episode is one of the earliest colored Smurfs animations. However, because of the long duration, it seems that most of the colors had faded.
- This episode also originally aired in color. However, a black and white dupe print with Dutch subtitles is known to exist.
- The episode can currently be seen at Belgian Comic Strip Centre.
- This episode is the third appearance of the Smurfs' magic flute, which is after the comic story "The Smurfs And The Magic Flute" and "The War Of The Seven Springs".
- According to other stories that the magic flute appeared, the power of the flute which makes others dancing does not work on a Smurf. Strangely, in this episode, the power of it works on a Smurf.
- When it first aired in Belgium, the end title appeared after the episode was over.
- It is the only color episode of the series that is known to been was dubbed in German. It is unknown if the other color episode "The Smurf Robot" (Le Schtroumpf-robot) was dubbed in German or was undubbed.