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Enter the bizarre world of Vader Abraham, lover of Smurfs and Weepuls
10.21.2019
05:44 pm
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If you owned a desktop PC in the nineties, then you must remember weepuls. Your friend’s mom might have even had one on the dash of her ‘99 Honda Accord. They were lovable little critters; pom-poms with googly-eyes, antennae, and flat, adhesive feet. Costumed in a variety of smile-provoking themes and colors - with cowboy hats, sunglasses, suits, dog ears, or wings - weepuls were used as a customizable promotional tools for pharmaceuticals and local real estate agents alike. They were also used as a bargaining chip, a notable bottom-tier prize of the millennial generation’s Elementary School magazine drives. Those, and Tootsie Roll banks.
 
The first Weepul was created in 1971 by Oklahoma City toy company, Bipo Inc. The story of the weepul, which I’m sure during its heyday was a multi-million dollar useless-crap empire,  isn’t all that notable, so I’ll spare you the boring details. Something that did catch my attention though was that these cotton ball creatures led a fascinating second life in the Netherlands, under the oh-so similar name, wuppies. The summer of 1981 was Dutch wuppie madness and apparently everyone had to have one. And interestingly enough, much of that can be attributed to a bizarre man named Vader Abraham, who wrote an entire record about them.
 

 
Never without with his iconic bowler hat and thick gray beard, Vader (Father) Abraham from Holland is the singer of such chart-topping Dutch Schlager hits like “Het kleine café aan de haven” and his right-wing populist banger (yep), “Den Uyl is in den olie.” Just from the photos alone, you know Vader is a total tripper. His website celebrates 128 gold and platinum records, but you know back in the day this dude probably partied pretty hard.
 
In 1977, Vader Abraham was asked to write a promotional song for The Smurfs (then big in the Netherlands). The serenading crooner, with his brooding baritone and twisted looks, Vader Abraham wrote the smash hit ‘T Smurfenlied (“The Smurf Song”) - a call and response duet with his chippy little blue friends. And of course, you know what happened next. People fucking loved it. So, he spent the next few years promoting himself as keeper of The Smurfs. He wrote several albums’ worth of Smurfs tunes, and you guessed it, every song sounds the exact same.
 

 
High off the successes of Smurf-mania, but seeing that his glory was quickly fading, Vader Abraham shed his skin as the Smurfs guy and rebranded - as the wuppies guy. His weepul tribute album saw the little throwaway toys as nearly life-sized, animated and singing a high-pitched tune to accompany the Vader’s powerful ballads. Once more, the music sparked a craze that was equally as massive as it was a trading tool for free child labor.
 
See Vader Abraham in action, after the jump…

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Posted by Bennett Kogon
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10.21.2019
05:44 pm
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Are the Smurfs Communist Nazis?


Image by Bit Weird.

I’d heard the theory that the Smurfs were a ploy to get us used to the imminent arrival of little blue aliens, but this is news to me. A French academic has published a book claiming that the Smurfs were both Communist and anti-Semitic, claims that have met with a backlash from fans of the little blue guys. From The Guardian:

Antoine Buéno, a lecturer at Sciences Po university in Paris, makes the claims in his new book Le Petit Livre Bleu: Analyse critique et politique de la société des Schtroumpfs, in which he points out that the Smurfs live in a world where private initiative is rarely rewarded, where meals are all taken together in a communal room, where there is one leader and where the Smurfs rarely leave their small country.

“Does that not remind you of anything? A political dictatorship, for example?” asks Buéno, going on to compare the Smurfs’ world to a totalitarian utopia reminiscent of Stalinist communism (Papa wears a red outfit and resembles Stalin, while Brainy is similar to Trotsky) and nazism (the character of the Smurfs’ enemy Gargamel is an antisemitic caricature of a Jew, he proposes). A story about the Black Smurfs, meanwhile, in which the Smurfs are bitten by a fly which turns their skin black and renders them unable to speak, has colonial overtones.

Reactions to the book were immediate and hostile, with commenters on Smurf fansites calling Buéno a “dream breaker”, an imbecile and a crook with “paranoid delusions”, who is ruining childhood memories.

 
Is this strange video perhaps more proof of a connection?
 

 
Thanks to Nicola Blackmore.

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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06.09.2011
09:02 pm
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Vader Abraham: The King of the Smurfs
03.30.2010
03:46 pm
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I’m afraid this will haunt my dreams for weeks to come. Vader Abraham (!) makes me imagine a hippified Dr. Gene Scott. My deepest apologies to all who view this.
 
image
 
thx? Ned Raggett

 

Posted by Brad Laner
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03.30.2010
03:46 pm
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