Lemme complete this thought as it applies to JWs and Smurfs:

Originally Posted by
Pong
If you know better than to seek the 13th floor, then you're probably alright in other respects.
That this Smurf thing is quirky and immaterial, is significant. Like the missing 13th floor, there's no practical consequence in having it or not. Smurfs serve perfectly as a harmless test of faith among JWs. It is both petty and commonplace. One can know instantly if the children of JWs are being raised as true JWs.
All societies employ such "silly" markers.
A little more on Japanese conformity. When my wife Yoko was a little girl growing up in Tokyo, she was ashamed of the lunches her mother packed. All the other kids would open their boxes to reveal cutsie masterpieces of motherly lunchcraft: mini wieners cut to look like octopi, carrot slices carved as flowers, home-made baby pizzas with toppings arranged as a winking carton face. There are cookbooks and magazines devoted to this art. Every mothers' magazine includes the latest lunch gimmicks. Poor Yoko just got the flat and unadorned product: an apple half chopped unimaginatively through the middle and scrunched into cling wrap, sandwich with the crust still on, etc. No sign of added care.
Her peers couldn't help but notice. Of course they wouldn't say anything. No doubt her teachers noticed also, and wondered about the family situation. Those bald lunches were a bad sign. "Is your mother alright Yoko?"
A sociopath may argue "but it's irrational". She's getting nutritious lunches anyway. Blind. It's supposed to be irrational. If one discounts petty human irrationality, that's a deeper test failed. It was always a trick question.