GNAP!

A verbal utterance from an extremely bizarre Smurf episode. It stuck out like a sore thumb in the sickeningly sweet Smurf oeuvre and was reminiscent of an animated Jack Chick comic!

Anyways, here's a summary of the action:

One of the Smurfs is peacefully strolling around the forest when an evil purple beetle sneaks up on the Smurf and bites his tail. Once bitten, the Smurf turns a dark shade of purple himself and his face twists up into a sneer. Now all he can say is "GNAP!" and he goes around biting other Smurfs' tails and transmitting the Disease of Evil.

And before you can say "Jack Robinson," the entire Smurf village is swept by the plague. Naturally, Papa Smurf figures out the problem and attempts to create a cure. But a cunning Evil Smurf paints himself blue and manages to bite Papa Smurf's tail. Papa tries to resist the evil but succumbs to the plague, thus leading to a poignant climax where Papa says something like:

"Can't hold out...any longer...GNAP!"

Of course, a happy ending falls out of nowhere--a nice blue butterfly cures everyone and they all go back to normal. But it freaked out my young cartoon-loving mind. I've always thought this episode was some crazed AIDS parable from some born-again screenwriter, but I was never sure. And the evil purple smurfs were really punk rock...

GNAP!

Before the animated episode was the comic book. The Smurfs went black, not purple. (Not very PC, but it is nothing compared to the "Smurfette" book.) The beetle was a fly in the comic. They found that the cure was pollen from a certain flower, but the fake blue Smurf infiltrated the village and infected everyone anyway. But, when all hope seemed lost, an explosion in Papa Smurf's lab spread pollen all over the village and cured everyone.

The (older) comic books were never "sickeningly sweet". In one story one Smurf declares himself dictator in Papa Smurf's absense, in another the Smurfs almost go to civil war over a disagreement about the grammatics of their language.