Barbapapa (Empath stories)



Barbapapa is a character who is part of the EMPATH: The Luckiest Smurf story series, mostly appearing in flashback stories. He is a candy vendor who works at a beach that the Smurfs traveled to for a brief vacation about two years before Empath returned home for good from Psychelia. Being a cousin of Gargamel who resembled him in much of his appearance except that he had a mustache, Barbapapa thought that the Smurfs were friendly folk and disregarded his cousin's letter about them until they refused to pay him for the candies he had given them, saying that they don't have any money. Deciding that he would capture them and then immediately inform Gargamel so that he could collect them as soon as possible, Barbapapa modified several rows of old wooden beehives and converted them into changing huts in order to lure the Smurfs into using them so he could lock them all inside. While Barbapapa slept, Duncan McSmurf broke through the floor boards of one of the huts and dug a tunnel underneath to get outside so that he could free all the Smurfs from the huts. When Gargamel finally arrived to receive his Smurfs, he and Barbapapa noticed that all but one of the Smurfs managed to escape, but as Gargamel reached into one of the huts to grab what they thought was a single Smurf, it turned out to be a crab that Papa Smurf and Duncan placed inside the hut to fool Gargamel. Angered at being deceived, Gargamel chased after Barbapapa with his magic broom stick, with the latter swearing that he will get his revenge.