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14 October 2005

Your United Nations money at work

When the Smurfs were just a sickening kiddie fad, some of us used to joke about a campaign to eradicate the pesky aquamarine creatures accompanied by the slogan "What is that blue goo on your shoe?"

Well, that was a sophomoric joke.

Then there's this thing from UNICEF, the United Nations children's fund. You can find some clips from the video here with reporting in Flemish or French. That doesn't matter since the images themselves are shocking.

If you look closely at the animated version as opposed to the stills, you'll notice that no Smurfs get killed. They get bounced around a lot, but for some inexplicable reason they don't actually die.

So, some of us are left scratching our heads at the purpose of this little piece of animation. One of the complaints about slapstick animated comedy like Wile E Coyote and even the old A-Team was that there were no logical and hideous consequences to shooting people, blowing them up or dropping them off a cliff.

Pray tell what is the difference is here.