The Astro Smurf (The Smurfs, 1981)

The Astro Smurf is the fourth episode in the first season of The Smurfs (1981), and an animated adaptation of the original comic story.

Summary
Papa Smurf helps Dreamy to fulfil his life's ambition of becoming an Astrosmurf with some help from Handy.

Why it Rocks

 * 1) This episode mixed both plot elements from The Astro Smurf and ''The Flying Smurf' ' together to make a whole episode.
 * 2) Most of the scenes came from the comics, while some are fairly new material.
 * 3) Good animation and voice acting.
 * 4) This episode spawned the "Is it much further, Papa Smurf?" running gag that continued to appear in later episodes of the season. However, that gag was somehow dropped in later seasons of the show.
 * 5) Despite the change of their skin color to green, the Swoofs still act the same as they did in the comics.
 * 6) The original comic version of "The Astro Smurf", led to the creation of Dreamy Smurf - a Smurf who dreams about exploring into exotic worlds, continued to appear as part of the main cast up until Season 8.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The episode is riddled with countless art and animation errors. Most of the character models would be misdrawn with odd proportions or separate eyes. At times, the animation would look stiff and robotic (usually without enough movement).
 * 2) In the comic, Gargamel and Azrael are nowhere to be seen. In this episode, they were shoehorned into the plot to be nothing more than filler. Most of the Smurfs (disguised as Swoofs) are aware of Gargamel and Azrael, but they don't actually interact with him in this episode.

Reception

 * It holds a rating of 7/10 on IMDB.

Trivia

 * Despite the fact this isn't the pilot episode, it was the first to air in broadcast order on NBC.