The REAL 1970s: "Where Are You All Coming From?" The Smurfs Arrive!

Saturday, August 28, 2004

"Where Are You All Coming From?" The Smurfs Arrive!

This is your "Smurf of the Month" at National petrol stations, July 1979. The Smurfs' orgins actually date back to the late 1950s, but over here in England most of us had never heard of them until they released a pop record called The Smurf Song, which crashed into our pop charts on 10/6/1978.

"Where are you all coming from?" asked Father Abraham.

"From Smurfland where we belong!" they warbled in reply.

The song made it all the way up to No. 2.

Of course, there was a spoof version:

"Where are you all coming from?"

"We're from Brixton, on the run!"

Smurf merchandising was everywhere - cuddly toys, books, figurines...

The original Smurf craze in England outlasted the 1970s, spilling over into the early 1980s.

Lovely.

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INTRODUCTION

This is one of a series of three blogs - the other two cover the 1960s (Spacehopper), and the 1980s ('80s Actual).

After all the '70s hype of the last ten years or so, this is a chance to relive the decade as it really was in England, through newspaper and magazine clippings and memories.

This is the REAL 1970s, not the BBC or Wikipedia's versions, which hype the decade to death and bolster it up with 1960s and 1980s pop culture.

The '70s were often grim, far slower moving than today, and saw the '60s hippie spell rapidly fading to be replaced by economic gloom and a glut of anger - which manifested itself in the Punk era.

It's the decade where we liked the Wombles, chucked frisbees, watched Upstairs, Downstairs and Starsky & Hutch, and witnessed the gloriously tacky but hugely danceable rise of a type of music called "Disco" - a new soundtrack for the discotheques, which had been established before the decade began. With its rich influences, including Soul and Pop, Disco was a wow. Though not with everybody.

Very few people had a video recorder (only 5% of UK households had one by 1980), there were no mobile phones, and although colour TV had been around in this country since 1967, they didn't come cheap and many of us poorer folk stuck to black and white.

Tristram of George & Mildred got "Pong" at Christmas 1979, but nobody I knew had a TV games system, which became available, at a price, late in the decade.

Many of us were dirt poor, inflation rocketed, in 1979 interest rates soared to 17% - the highest since records began in 1694, decimalisation (the coins were designed in the late '60s ready for "D" day in 1971) was controversial - was it bumping up prices? - and the Queen's Silver Jubilee Day saw the Sex Pistols in the pop charts with a song which certainly did not express loyal greetings...

Come back to the REAL 1970s, no rosy coloured specs, no rewriting of the decade to include pop culture belonging to the '60s or '80s, but as clear a view as I can possibly give of the decade!

This blog is largely based on English magazine and newspaper clippings and my memories, but I hope that it will also be useful and enjoyable to those living in the other UK nations - and much further afield.

Saturday, August 28, 2004

"Where Are You All Coming From?" The Smurfs Arrive!

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INTRODUCTION

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The Real 1970s...