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UNICEF Bombs Smurf Village

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Perhaps it’s a sign of Armageddon, or just an outrageously bad marketing idea.

UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, in an anti-war fit, recently scared children in Belgium. Many went to bed crying and screaming after the broadcast of an "animated TV special" that featured the bombing of Smurf Village, home to the kid-friendly blue cartoon characters popular in the 1980s.

The film, billed as an "adult-only episode” not to be shown before 9 p.m., was created to draw attention to the use of children in various wars throughout the globe.

The program was approved by the family of "Peyo," the late creator of The Smurfs.

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According to a report in the UK Daily Telegraph, the program is quite graphic.

It opens with the Smurfs dancing, hand-in-hand, around a campfire and singing the Smurf song. Bluebirds flutter past and rabbits gambol around their familiar village of mushroom-shaped houses until, without warning, bombs begin to rain from the sky ...

Tiny Smurfs scatter and run in vain from the whistling bombs before being felled by blast waves and fiery explosions. The final scene shows a scorched and tattered Baby Smurf sobbing inconsolably, surrounded by prone Smurfs.

The final frame bears the message: "Don't let war affect the lives of children."

UNICEF Belgium, which created and distributed the program, intends to use the program as a fund-raiser for the rehabilitation of former child soldiers in Burundi.

Philippe Henon, a spokesman for UNICEF Belgium, told the UK Daily Telegraph that his agency had "set out to shock, after concluding that traditional images of suffering in Third World war zones had lost their power to move television viewers.”

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