Title Translation of

No Time For Smurfs French Le sablier du temps Spanish Poema al tiempo German Keine Zeit für Schlümpfe Italian Non scherzare con il tempo Dutch Geen tijd voor Smurfen

"No Time For Smurfs" is a Season 3 episode from the Smurfs cartoon show.

Plot Summary

The story begins with Poet reciting his "Ode To Time", which gets interrupted by being smacked by a ball that gets thrown his way. Handy, Brainy, Clumsy, and Smurfette are busy playing smurfball, with Handy inviting Poet to join them. Poet says that he has more important things to do and then he kicks the ball toward them. Both Brainy and Clumsy race to intercept the ball, but they collide into each other, and the ball ends up bouncing down into a narrow ravine. Smurfette thinks that's the end of their smurfball game, but Handy sees a path that leads down to the bottom of the ravine that they can take in order to get their ball back.

As the four Smurfs travel down the path, they find their ball inside the cave. But they also find something else of interest inside a cave: a mysterious room that looks like nobody's been in there for hundreds of years. On the table in the middle of the room, the Smurfs see an hourglass. Handy wonders if the crank on the hourglass still works, and so he gives it a push, and suddenly the hourglass flips over with the sands inside it turning black, making the other Smurfs wonder. Smurfette then sees some writing on the table near the hourglass, and after Brainy blows away the dust, he reads the inscription: Let no one change the Sands Of Time. As they wonder what that means, Smurfette suggests that they should go ask Papa Smurf about it.

After they leave the cave and head back to the village, Clumsy notices that a bird is flying backwards and tells Brainy about it, but Brainy instantly dismisses his friend's comment, saying that birds do not fly backwards. But then Handy also notices fish leaping backwards in the stream. This makes the four Smurfs quickly run to the village to find Papa Smurf, and as they arrive they see their fellow Smurfs not only moving backwards, but also speaking backwards.

They soon realize that with the flipping of the hourglass, time was moving backwards, and thus they have ignored the warning about not changing the Sands of Time. The four Smurfs decide to return to the room where the hourglass was found and flip the hourglass again in the hope that things will be set right. Handy turns the crank of the hourglass, and soon the sands within it change back to their original hue. They feel relieved that things are back to normal until they see a ball identical to theirs roll into the room and hear voices that sound similar to theirs speaking the same things they have said when they first entered the cave.

The four Smurfs decide to investigate who these visitors there until they see four identical Smurfs like themselves, and then they run back into the room for safety, wondering who those Smurfs were. Brainy thinks they're the victims of mass hysteria, and Smurfette thinks that they're no longer themselves. Handy reasons that if they turned the hourglass to make time go backwards, then turning the hourglass to make time go forwards again would mean that events that originally happened would repeat themselves, such as the four Smurfs who entered the cave to find their smurfball.

As Smurfette wonders where their duplicate selves went, they head into the village to tell Papa Smurf about four Smurfs that looked exactly like themselves in the cave that their smurfball got lost in. Papa Smurf decides to go with his four little Smurfs to investigate, not knowing that they are duplicates of the four Smurfs still inside the cave. Meanwhile, the originals are wondering what to do about the existence of the duplicates. Handy suggests shaking the hourglass to straighten things out, but then this gets into a struggle as Clumsy and Brainy offer their help and suggestions until they end up breaking the hourglass.

Wondering what they have done now, the four Smurfs go outside the cave to investigate. They notice that everything in the forest is so quiet, and then Clumsy notices that the animals in the forest appear to be frozen in motion. The other Smurfs also see Papa Smurf in the same state with the four duplicates, and as they return to the village, they see that every Smurf is frozen in motion. They realize that with the breaking of the hourglass, all time is frozen, and Smurfette, Brainy, and Clumsy mourn that there's nothing they can do now that the hourglass is broken. Handy suggests that they can build a new hourglass, and soon the three other Smurfs scramble to help the village inventor build it so that they can put the Sands of Time back inside.

With the hourglass complete and the Sands of Time collected and put inside it, the four Smurfs return with it to the cave and Handy turns the crank, causing the sands to flow within it. They leave the cave, thinking that the worst is now over, but as they go outside, they see that the sun is moving in and out of the sky and that weather conditions are constantly changing. After they run back into the cave and wonder what to do, an old man with a long flowing beard and a robe materializes and demands to know what the four Smurfs are doing there, telling them that they have messed up the Sands of Time. Just then, Mother Nature also appears, wondering about the weather conditions outside and addressing the old man as Father Time. He tells Mother Nature that the little blue vandals have mixed up the Sands of Time, to which she says that they will simply have to unmix them. Soon, with an incantation from both Father Time and Mother Nature, everything is restored to normal.

Papa Smurf then sees that the four duplicate Smurfs have now vanished, only for the originals to appear with Father Time and Mother Nature. Father Time tells Papa Smurf that these Smurfs were found in the cave playing around with the Sands of Time and was considering turning them into infants to teach them a lesson, but Mother Nature rebukes him for having voiced such a thought, telling Papa Smurf that he's always this grouchy so early in the millennium.

With the four Smurfs back in the village seeing that everything in it is back to normal, Papa Smurf says that they've had "quite a time" and then laughs at the unintended pun he made. Poet shows up with his completed "Ode To Time", and as he begins to recite his poem, the four Smurfs make a run for it. Poet just says in disgust that some Smurfs don't have time for great art.

Background Information

This episode marks the first appearance of Father Time, who becomes a recurring character until Season 9's "The Smurfs That Time Forgot".

Mother Nature tells the Smurfs that Father Time always gets so grouchy "early in the millennium", which seems to set the cartoon show's universe sometime in the 11th century, although it is uncertain what kind of calendar system Mother Nature is actually referring to, if any.

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