"The Purple Smurfs" was an episode that appeared in Season 1 of the Smurfs cartoon show.
Summary
Upon waking up to a bright new day, Papa Smurf calls all his little Smurfs together to start work on the bridge. As work commences, Lazy decides that he will take a little nap until he comes face-to-face with Papa Smurf, who tells him to get back to work now like everyone else. Hefty from the gully of the river below the bridge asks Papa Smurf to hand him a shovel, which he does until he finds out it's been covered in goo. Greedy comes along to tell Papa Smurf that it's his shovel, and pulls it away from Papa Smurf's sticky hands. Smurfette calls Papa Smurf's attention of her picking out the color for painting the bridge, but Papa Smurf is too busy seeing Brainy not watching where he was swinging his ax to chop wood, and instead he ends up cutting the rope that held the bridge up, sending it crashing down into the gully. With Papa Smurf ready to explode, he walks off into the forest only to trip over Lazy, who found himself a nice place to sleep. Papa Smurf angrily tells Lazy to go into the forest and get lots of logs, "and move it", which Lazy quickly gets up and does.
As Lazy begins to chop down a tree, he finds himself pestered by a purple fly who annoyingly circles around him, laughing. Lazy chases the purple fly off into the forest until he trips over a tree root, but after he gets up, he doesn't notice that the purple fly has secretly flown around him and is now behind him, looking at and zooming toward his tail. Lazy yelps in pain and looks to see that his tail is now throbbing, realizing that the purple fly had bit him. Then suddenly Lazy turns purple, and his mind goes blank as he now barks "gnap gnap gnap" and hops off into the forest.
Meanwhile, Papa Smurf is getting annoyed that Lazy is taking his sweet time coming back and sends Brainy to go find him. As Brainy searches the forest for Lazy, he hears a "gnap gnap" nearby and finds himself face to face with Lazy, teeth gritted and skin all purple. Brainy bolts back to tell Papa Smurf about how he found Lazy, who then surmises that Lazy must have been bitten by a purple fly. Smurfette then sees Lazy head off into the village. The Smurfs give chase and eventually capture Lazy, tying him up before Papa Smurf tells them to bring Lazy to his house. Papa Smurf seems to recall that the last case of what he and the other Smurfs had experienced happened when he was a young Smurf barely 100 years old, but now he couldn't remember what the cure was.
As Papa Smurf and some other Smurfs head to his laboratory in order to find what could cure Lazy, they hear another Smurf cry out in pain. It was Hefty, who was standing outside Lazy's house keeping watch over him. Lazy had broken his bonds and now turned Hefty purple by biting his tail. Papa Smurf told his little Smurfs to leave his laboratory so he could find the cure for this disease before it is too late.
Papa Smurf spent the night working in his laboratory on a possible cure, and then by morning he called for some volunteers that would go into the forest to capture a purple Smurf in order to test it, warning them to be careful. Many Smurfs choose to do so, and soon they are searching the forest for one. Then suddenly Clumsy spots one and chases after him with a lasso, but he ends up getting bound by his own lasso, and another purple Smurfs bites him in the tail. Brainy hears Clumsy's cry for help, but arrives only to witness Clumsy turning purple and thus uses this moment to his advantage, bringing other Smurfs toward him to compliment him for his "bravery".
In his laboratory, Papa Smurf tests his formula on the captured Clumsy by spritzing it into his mouth. The purple Clumsy bounces around uncontrollably before passing out, but he still remains purple. Handy carries Clumsy back to his house when Clumsy awakens and bites Handy's tail, turning him purple. Greedy immediately runs for it, but is also turned purple. Papa Smurf realizes that he must find something else to try curing them.
Another day passes. Papa Smurf again calls for volunteers to capture a purple Smurfs for yet another attempt at a cure, but this time his little Smurfs refuse to volunteer. So Papa Smurf now chooses a few Smurfs to go and get him a purple Smurf, which they succeed in doing. This time Papa Smurf pours some kind of formula upon the purple Smurf's head, but now it does nothing but cause that purple Smurf to break his bonds. Papa Smurf runs for safety as now a dozen or so purple Smurfs emerge from the laboratory.
Yet another day passes. Papa Smurf is now frustrated because nothing he has tried works, and now up to 17 Smurfs have been infected with the "purple disease". Their next course of action is to capture the purple fly, so that from it they could learn what the cure was. As the Smurfs search the forest for the purple fly, some get bitten by purple Smurfs, while some others accidentally capture hornets. Papa Smurf eventually captures the purple fly and brings it to his laboratory, where he feeds him a tuberose flower before getting some rest. As Papa Smurf watched, the fly sniffed the flower, sneezed, and then turned blue. He realized at that point what the cure actually was -- tuberose pollen. He orders his little Smurfs to get as many tuberose flowers as they can.
While the Smurfs gather up the tuberose and Papa Smurf extracts the pollen from the flowers, purple Hefty sneaks into the village and uses blue paint to disguise himself, waiting outside Papa Smurf's laboratory and overhearing Papa Smurf telling his little Smurfs to refill when they run out of pollen. Soon Smurfette sees dozens of purple Smurfs hopping toward the village, which leads Papa Smurf and the remaining blue Smurfs out into the open with their pollen-filled bellows to blow out clouds of pollen toward the purple Smurfs. One of them inhales the pollen and turns blue, but before the blue Smurf could react in time, he is bitten by a purple Smurf and turns purple again.
This continues on until Papa Smurf finds himself the only blue Smurf left surrounded by about a hundred purple Smurfs, and that he is now out of pollen. He races back to his laboratory to get some more, but in his laboratory he encounters purple Hefty now disguised as a blue Smurf. Purple Hefty accidentally sets fire to the laboratory, which Papa Smurf tries to put out, distracting him long enough for Hefty to bite Papa Smurf in the tail. Papa Smurf realizes at the point that all the Smurfs are now lost before he fully succumbs to the full effects of the "purple disease".
Fortunately, the fire also causes an explosion in the laboratory, which unleashes a big enough cloud of tuberose pollen to cure him and all his little Smurfs simultaneously. Papa Smurf is so glad to see all his little Smurfs cured, he promises that he will never complain about them again. That is, until he hears a "gnap gnap gnap" and finds out that it was Jokey playing a joke on him.
Quotes
"He's all purple, and all he says is 'gnap'!"
"Lazy's always talking about a nap!"
"Like this?"(Imitates Lazy as a purple Smurf) "GNAP!"
"Yeow!"
- - Brainy and Vanity, with Brainy telling Papa Smurf what he saw of Lazy
Background Information
- This episode is based on the original comic book story called "The Black Smurfs", where the Smurfs were infected by an identical disease that was turning blue Smurfs black. It is possibly due to racism issues that the color of the diseased Smurfs was changed from black to purple. Also, Smurfette did not appear in the original version of the story.