James R | On 29, Dec 2015

Netflix will help you lie to your kids this New Year’s Eve with a series of countdown videos designed to trick your loved ones into thinking it’s midnight.

The streaming giant first began its annual deception last year, with a special video featuring King Julien, of Madagascar fame, counting down the clock. This year, it’s scaling up the deceitful operation with a whole new set of New Year’s Eve videos featuring Oona and Baba of Puffin Rock, Care Bears & Cousins, Inspector Gadget, the Project Mc2 girls, and Netflix’s DreamWorks Animation stars, including King Julien and Mr. Peabody & Sherman.

With characters designed to appeal to preschoolers, tweens and everyone in between, now you can lie to your children at any age!

The Inspector Gadget video sees him saving New Year’s Eve from a mischievous M.A.D. agent just in the nick of time for a dazzling firework display. King Julien delivers another party full of dancing and music. Puffin Rock residents Oona and Baba re-live their adventures and celebrate with the Northern Lights, nature’s very own fireworks. Mr. Peabody and Sherman venture around the world to gather talk show guests from DreamWorks’ various Netflix franchises – Toothless, Puss in Boots, The Croods and the Dinotrux team – for a star-studded countdown event celebrating another 12 months of corporate synergy. Care Bears & Cousins, meanwhile, head to Share Bear’s Share Shack for food and fun – not Share Bear’s “Shake Shack”, as Netflix’s press release incorrectly calls it, which would be an entirely new level of commercialisation.

Netflix argues that such fibs are common around the world, with research commissioned by the company finding that more than half of parents (58 per cent) would jump at the chance to put their kids to bed before the clock strikes 12am on New Year’s Eve.

Parents in the US, UK, Canada and Australia agree 9 pm is the new midnight, with nearly half of parents in these countries counting down those crucial 10 seconds before then. Parents Down Under can’t wait for bedtime themselves, with one-third of Aussie parents (34 per cent) admitting they’d hit the sack themselves after kissing the kids goodnight – long before midnight. American parents are the worst, meanwhile, with 41 per cent already planning to use a New Year’s Eve countdown to trick their offspring into bed.

“We won’t tell them it’s not midnight if you don’t,” says the company in a statement. What better way to start a new year?

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