The Smurfs: The Mystery of the Stolen Magic Flute (1992 TV special)

The Smurfs: The Mystery of the Stolen Magic Flute is a 1992 one-hour television special written and directed by Peyo, based on his comic strips The Smurfs and Johan and Peewit. It serves as a sequel to the 1976 film The Smurfs and the Magic Flute. This feature was produced by PBS Animation in association with Hanna-Barbera Productions and Lafig S.A. and aired on both PBS and ABC on November 15, 1992.

The special was nominated for a Primetime Emmy award but lost to TBD. It was taken off the air in February 2017 by Boomerang (along with the Hanna-Barbera Smurfs cartoon series), but remains to exist in its 1992 home-video edition from PBS Home Video and 2008 DVD release from Warner Home Video, as well as reruns on Fox.

Thierry Culliford, Peyo's son stated "This was one of my father's last works with Hanna-Barbera and PBS Animation. It was produced after the ninth season of the original show as a sequel to Belvision's The Smurfs and the Magic Flute."

Synopsis
Gargamel and his pet cat Azrael stole the magic flute from the Smurf Village, and now it is up to Sir Johan and Peewit to help their little blue friends get it back and defeat Gargamel once and for all.

Plot
One night, Gargamel used his teleportation magic to transport the Smurfs' magic flutes inside his castle to keep them locked away in his small chest. But by the next morning, Papa Smurf checked to see if the magic flutes are still inside his house. When he realized that they disappeared mysteriously, he called in his little Smurfs and Smurflings for a meeting. He told them that somebody must've stolen the two magic flutes and he just can't put his mind up to know exactly who took them.

Still under construction...

Smurfs

 * Papa Smurf (voiced by Don Messick) - TBA.
 * Brainy Smurf (voiced by Danny Goldman) - TBA.
 * Hefty Smurf (voiced by Frank Welker) - TBA.
 * Clumsy Smurf (voiced by William 'Bill' Callaway) - TBA.
 * Smurfette (voiced by Mary Kay Bergman) - TBA.

Smurflings

 * Natural 'Nat' Smurfling (voiced by Charlie Adler) - TBA.
 * Snappy Smurfling (voiced by Pat Musick) - TBA.
 * Slouchy Smurfling (voiced by Noelle North) - TBA.
 * Sassette Smurfling (voiced by Julie McWhirter) - TBA.

Humans

 * Sir Johan (voiced by Michael Bell) - TBA.
 * Peewit (voiced by Frank Welker) - TBA.
 * The King (voiced by Colin Fox) - TBA.
 * Dame Barbara (voiced by Linda Gary) - TBA.

Villians

 * Gargamel (voiced by Paul Winchell) - TBA.
 * Azrael (vocal effects by Don Messick) - TBA.

Voice Cast

 * Don Messick as Papa Smurf, Dreamy Smurf and Azrael
 * Jonathan Winters as Grandpa Smurf
 * Danny Goldman as Brainy Smurf
 * Bill Callaway as Clumsy Smurf and Painter Smurf
 * Michael Bell as Grouchy Smurf, Handy Smurf, Lazy Smurf and Sir Johan
 * Frank Welker as Hefty Smurf, Poet Smurf and Peewit
 * June Foray as Jokey Smurf and Mother Nature
 * Mary Kay Bergman as Smurfette
 * Paul Winchell as Gargamel
 * Richard Gautier as Wooly Smurf
 * Kip King as Tailor Smurf
 * Henry Polic II as Tracker Smurf
 * Hamilton Camp as Greedy Smurf and Harmony Smurf
 * Bernard Erhard as Timber Smurf
 * Marshall Efron as Sloppy Smurf
 * Alan Young as Miner Smurf, Farmer Smurf and Scaredy Smurf
 * Alan Oppenheimer as Vanity Smurf
 * Nancy Cartwright as Baby Smurf
 * Charlie Adler as Natural 'Nat' Smurfling
 * Julie McWhirter as Sassette Smurfling
 * Pat Musick as Snappy Smurfling
 * Noelle North as Slouchy Smurfling
 * Susan Blu as Nanny Smurf
 * Russi Taylor as Smoogle
 * Colin Fox as the King
 * Linda Gary as Dame Barbara

Crew

 * Written and Directed by: Peyo
 * Executive Producers: Peyo, Hartford N. Gunn Jr., William Hanna, Joseph Barbera
 * Producer: TBA
 * Animation Directors: TBA
 * Based on characters created by: Peyo

Development
The Smurfs cartoon series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions was cancelled by NBC after its ninth season, due to its time-travel plotline and continuity. The studio ceased any future projects of The Smurfs (with the notable exceptions of Cartoon All-Stars To The Rescue and their final television special with the little blue creatures) and that was the end of it. Peyo decided to make a sequel to the previous animated feature film which he had worked on 14 years ago, The Smurfs and the Magic Flute.

On February of 1990, Peyo pitched his new The Smurfs film to Disney with a plot outline and the film was eventually approved in the beginning of summer 1990. He was working on a film entitled The Smurfs and the Magic Flute II, which was supposed to be a sequel and continuity to the original 1976 film co-produced with Belvision Studios. The script took a long time, as well as storyboards drawn by the creator himself.

There could have been scenes where Johan and Peewit meet Smurfette and another where the magic flute is going to be taken by the evil wizard, Gargamel. According to Leonard Maltin, the script, storyboards, animatics and pencil tests of the planned sequel have survived. Pencil tests were done by Milt Kahl, Glen Keane, Jamie Oliff and Ian Freedman. There was going to be new songs too, such as Meet Smurfette and The Magic Flute Will Be Mine. However, these songs didn't make the cut and were later put into the one-hour television special.

The movie would've had diamonds with the Smurfs' blue essence in it, but it was removed, fearing that it might give Japanese audiences eye problems and seizures. While working on the film, Peyo saw the box-office failure of the 1987 animated feature The Chipmunk Adventure. He then decided to cancel production of the film by September 1990, after he had completed the script, storyboards, and animatics. Peyo then broke ties with Disney, took all of his stuff with him which contained the planned sequel and instead made it into a one-hour television special produced by PBS Animation (with co-production from Hanna-Barbera Productions and Lafig S.A.). Voice recording sessions began on November 1990 and finished in January of 1991. Production on the animation for the special began around February 1991 and finished in October 1992. During those months, retakes, music scoring, and sound design were being completed. Once the animation is finished, it is sent back to the United States where it is reviewed; the staff look for mistakes in the animation or "things that didn't animate the way [the staff] intended". These problems are then fixed back in Taiwan (including the Phillipines) and the special is finished, through its exact date November 2, 1992. Post-production was completed in November 13, 1992 (two days before its premiere on ABC, prior to Peyo's death on Christmas Eve later that year).

Writing
The special was entirely written by Peyo with some story editing done by Hanna-Barbera cartoon writers, Len Janson, Chuck Menville and many others who worked on the Saturday morning cartoon (while the writing remains consistent and competent).

Still under construction...

Voices
Most of the voice cast reprised their roles from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon series, with Mary Kay Bergman as the new voice of Smurfette. Lucille Bliss was intended for reprise the role, but was turned down in favor of Mary Kay Bergman. When the special was completed, the character voices were done without the use of pitch-shifting, resulting in the voices sounding slighty deeper than before (unlike the cartoon however, although there were occasional exceptions in some episodes).

Animation
Animation was outsourced to Wang Film Productions in Taiwan, with additional animation from Fil-Cartoons in the Phillipines.

Still under construction...

Music
The music in the special was composed by John Debney.

Still under construction...

Soundtrack
A CD soundtrack of the special was released on November 13, 1992.

Reception
The special received generally positive reviews from critics. Critics were praised for the excellent animation, humor, and its extremely high-calibur storyline compared to the standards of Saturday morning cartoons.

Home media
A home video edition of the special was released on PBS Home Video on November 15, 1992 (the same day the special aired on TV).

The special was released on DVD in an remastered deluxe edition by Warner Home Video on October 23, 2008 to celebrate The Smurfs ' 50th anniversary, completely restored and remastered from the original broadcast master tape.

Trivia

 * The special beat the original Smurfs and the Magic Flute film with an extremely high-calibur storyline, better-quality animation and lip-sync, to which critics were unsatisfied with Belvision's poorly-done lip sync for the two English dubs (UK in 1979, US in 1983) of the original 1976 film.
 * This special used Hanna-Barbera's then new digital ink and paint system, as opposed to traditionally hand-colored cels.
 * Both William Hanna and Joseph Barbera considered this an old shame for themselves due to a few darker and edgier tones and the extremely high-calibur storyline compared to the original show itself.
 * Also, Hartford N. Gunn Jr. (founder of PBS) had told Peyo, Hanna and Barbera to get rid of the parts where Brainy gets booted out of the village for talking too much, deeming that it would be rather too repetitive and formulaic, and that it would lose energy of the special. So they re-edited the story and instead made Brainy more tolerable here, however.
 * The special aired on both PBS and ABC instead of NBC. The reason why it didn't air on NBC is because the channel had to get rid of their Saturday morning lineup in favor of news programming.
 * After its initial telecast, the special re-ran on both Cartoon Network (starting in 1993) and Boomerang (in 2000). Turner Broadcasting System bought the special from PBS in 1993 after its original broadcast on November 15, 1992 and continues to hold ownership with both Warner Bros. (who owns the home media distribution rights to the Hanna-Barbera cartoon series) and Sony Pictures Entertainment (who had produced the live-action/CGI duology and Smurfs: The Lost Village) to this day.
 * The original title cards in the initial telecast and home video edition were PBS Animation Presents: Johan and Peewit, followed by Featuring the Smurfs in The Mystery of The Stolen Magic Flute. This was however, redone in later airings and for DVD release to simply just The Smurfs: The Mystery of The Stolen Magic Flute.
 * In the original broadcast and home video edition, the PBS Animation logo was shown at the end of the special. Later airings and the DVD release had the HB All-Stars logo (with Papa Smurf in it) plastered over the PBS Animation logo to remove any mentions of PBS.
 * When Peyo had created the first production of the special, it was originally intended to be a feature film produced in co-production with Walt Disney Feature Animation. But Peyo had to abruptly cancel the project after the script, storyboards, and animatics have been completed (following the box-office failure of The Chipmunk Adventure) and decided to instead make it into a one-hour TV special.
 * However, Disney was finally able to produce a Smurfs feature film in 1995 with Peyo's son Thierry Culliford writing up a new script with several Disney writers.
 * This would be the last time Paul Winchell voiced Gargamel. In Gargamel's future appearances, he would be voiced by either Hank Azaria or Jim Cummings.
 * This special was known for the use of digital ink-and-paint and occasionally 3D computer animation for the backgrounds in the Smurflings' psychedelic song sequence entitled, No Smurf's A Nobody (later redone as Nobody's A Nobody for The Amazing World of Gumball episode The Complitation.) where Johan and Peewit are hallucinating and seeing glorious colors of the rainbow, and zooming-in and out of perspective camera shots of the Smurf village, the kingdom, Gargamel's castle, etc. It was also known for the use of additional flourishes such as full animation and form shadows on the characters, which were added for the special as the animation artwork follows the lead of the series in its art direction and character designs.
 * The special makes a reference to Walt Disney's Dumbo, where Johan and Peewit see pink animals throughout the psychedelic song sequence sung by the Smurflings.
 * This special would probably be the last animated appearances of The Smurflings, Baby Smurf, Grandpa Smurf, Nanny Smurf and Smoogle until the Smurfs television series produced by Disney in 1996.
 * Instrumental music cues from the Hanna-Barbera Smurfs cartoon and The Smurfs and the Magic Flute were used in the special.
 * The animation quality has considerably improved over the previous seasons of the Hanna-Barbera Smurfs cartoon. Even the animation is noticeably higher-budget than the original series itself.
 * This was the final Smurfs television special produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, and the last one produced in collaboration with PBS Animation.
 * The last two specials set in the style of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon were Halloween-themed direct-to-video films produced by Warner Bros. Animation in the early-to-mid 2000s (after Studio Peyo left Disney, following the cancellation of the 1996 television series on ABC after its first season had completed production), The Smurfs Meet Frankenstein and The Smurfs Meet the Wolfman. Both specials were made without the involvement of Thierry Culliford and Studio Peyo, due to them working on their own half-hour animated TV special in 1998 with PBS Animation which would be more faithful to Peyo's original work. It was entitled, Smurfs: The Lost Village. The special followed Theirry's script closely, including the ending where Gargamel plans to capture the Smurfs again next time. Theirry Culliford himself called this special to be the most faithful adaptation of his father's work, unlike the computer-animated feature film remake where Sony would do 19 years later. Animation was handled overseas at AKOM Production Company, as the animation remains consistent and competent and stayed closely to the original comics.
 * An original version of the one-hour television special from its initial broadcast was restored and remastered from its original broadcast master tape and was screened in Sydney, Australia on October 23, 2008, celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Smurfs.
 * The special contained songs from the albums Father Abraham in Smurfland and The Smurfs All-Star Show, with permission from the record company who made them. They were re-recorded by most of the entire cast from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon series and Mary Kay Bergman.
 * A few new songs, such as Meet Smurfette and The Magic Flute Will Be Mine were created for the special.