If that's that ass-licking flash, no thanks. Retarded. But if this was indeed a serious question, I had a speaker in my senior art class that was trying to get people interested in going to college for um... "animation". Cartoons, CG and whatnot. Anyway, he used the smurfs as an example. How they only go 15 frames per second and stuff. And according to him the cartoon is based off of German folklore. But a lot of liberties are taken with the source material so really I don't know if that can even be considered. Though I honestly don't know what the thing was in Germany that they used but if you're curious that should get you a good start on solving the mystery.