I was researching the average height of a Smurf for an article and learned that Smurfs are often described as, “three apples tall.”

If you haven’t taken the paragraph break as an opportunity to think about that, please do so now.

That means Smurfs are about a foot tall. That’s up to your knees! I’ve always imagined Smurfs as, at most, one apple tall. Plus, then how do they live inside mushrooms?

The Internet, of course, has the answer. A quick Google found this magnficient thread on the Smurfs Collector Bulletin Board:

That second poster (Sassette, a moderator) goes on to produce the reference guide the animator’s used to draw the Smurfs cartoon. Un-smurfing-beleivable! A quick look at the guide reveals that yes, Papa Smurf really was about knee high on Gargamel and approximately as tall as Azrael the cat.

This completely changes the way I think about Smurfs!

The forum’s members go on to speculate that the mushrooms were possibly enlarged by Papa Smurf’s magic, or perhaps just regular tiny houses built by Handy Smurf and camoflauged as mushrooms to trick outsiders.