PETA is a douchebag.  Sure their hearts are in the right place but their brains are lodged so far up somewhere the sun doesn't shine they end up making idiotic decisions, such as protesting Mario -- of Super Mario Bros. fame -- and his penchant for wearing tanuki skin to gain the power to fly.

Sure, the tanuki -- the Japanese name for a raccoon dog --  is a real animal that is skinned alive for its fur; unarguably an awful and inhumane practice. But Mario is a fictional character. And he doesn't actually kill any tanukis to gain his flying abilities -- if my memory of Super Mario Bros. 3 serves me correctly, there's a feather involved -- so PETA's argument that the little Italian plumber is "sending a message that it's ok to wear fur" is,  like most things PETA does, complete and utter bullshit.

But, never ones to let logic get in the way, the lovely folks at PETA took time out of their busy paint-throwing schedules to concoct this little game in which you play a tanuki chasing after a flying Mario, dripping with blood from his ill-gotten fur. Kudos to those belligerent tree-huggers for bringing to light the plight of the tanuki, but their argument against Mario is as facile as claiming the game reinforces stereotypes of Italian-Americans or promotes drug use.

Okay, the drug use thing might have a ring of truth to it, considering that Mario and Luigi dig up more mushrooms than small-town Deadheads...but I digress. [Buzzfeed]