This little Piggy Doll didn't go to market

We all know about the Piggy Dolls comeback, yeah?  If not, you can read up about it here.

Quick recap for those who haven't been following this: three girls were in a group called Piggy Dolls that debuted a couple of years back and they were kinda chubby, then they came back and became somewhat less chubby... and then they came back again recently but this time it was actually three completely different girls using the same name who were typical-kpop-skinny, thus defeating the purpose of the original Piggy Dolls concept.  Great, now we're all up to speed.

When this happened, I did my best to get a brief snapshot about how the k-pop community felt about this.  The response from YouTube, various articles and forums was fairly expected and mostly the same - naturally, the notoriously whiny "vocal talent is everything omg" crowd were horrified that clearly superior singers were replaced with some averagely-voiced but prettier girls.  Screencaps and a lot more after the jump.

And here's some comments recently left on their earliest video, "Trend", just for contrast:

 Now let's get a few things straight:

1.  Yes, I do agree that using the same name for a different bunch of girls to the last lot is kind of odd.  I would think that in fact would be odd in any case no matter what the group was, if a complete member-swap was done.  Imagine your favourite k-pop group comes back and it's a completely different bunch of people - no matter the artist, you'd be weirded out.  Most k-pop fans cry a river of tears when just ONE member changes.

2.  Yes, I do think that the name "Piggy Dolls" doesn't really have a lot of meaning when applied to some typically super-skinny k-pop girls like that new lot they threw in there.  Standing up for equal representation of different body types, helping girls with low self-esteem... yeah, I get it.

3.  Yes, the old girls are probably better singers.

4.  Back in "Trend/Piggy Style" days I totally would have Piggystyled that girl with the red hair, who was at that stage fairly curvy and in my opinion looking far sexier than later on when their album came out, and also far sexier than about 99% of other k-pop girls in general for that matter.  That's actually not really relevant to any point I'm about to make, I'm just putting it out there just in case some of you reading this right now look a bit like her and aren't doing anything much this weekend.

Girl on the right, 10/10 - would pig.

BUT BEFORE WE TAKE UP OUR PITCHFORKS AND TORCHES WITH THE VOCALFAG CROWD AND GO TO BURN DOWN THE BUILDING OF WHOEVER WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL THIS FUCKING SHIT, LET'S HANG ON JUST A FUCKIN' MINUTE HERE, CUNTS.

What does a YouTube search of Piggy Dolls reveal?  Here's the top three matches:

The first MV hit for their earliest song "Trend" doesn't even have 10,000 views yet.  Their album feature track that came out later with the girls noticeably slimmed down, "Know Her", did substantially better and has nearly 60,000 views - but it took two years to get there, which isn't that impressive, a video of your friend lighting his farts with a cigarette lighter posted at the same time probably would have more views than that by now.  In the meantime, the new song with the all-new skinnier girls has just over 40,000 hits in ONE WEEK.

I wonder what k-pop fans who were supposedly in love with Piggy Dolls and their "amazing vocals" were doing?  Not checking out the girls on YouTube, obviously.  Maybe they didn't need to because they'd already purchased the music and had supported these wonderful talented girls that way?  I thought I'd take to the forums and ask the question that it hadn't occurred to anybody else to ask:

Well, that's a fairly resounding "no we didn't buy this shit, are you serious?".

However, do you know who DID buy their stuff?  ME, that's fuckin' who.

When I went to Sydney in May 2012 I saw their album in the Sydney Media Asia store, the biggest and cheapest k-pop store in that city that stocks official albums.  It was $22 (a typical new release album price for Australia), and I thought "wow, that's a bit steep, might pass on that because I would rather save my money for the T-ara Fleshlight", so I didn't buy it at the time.  I returned to the same store in February 2013 and saw the SAME ALBUM, and it was $10, and it also had a "buy 2, get 1 free" sticker on it.  I thought that was a good deal but I couldn't find two other k-pop albums with the same sticker on it that I also wanted (you know how these pricks are, they only put them on the crap nobody wants), so I passed on it again.  I returned to the same store in September this year and THERE IT WAS AGAIN FOR $5, and the "buy 2 get 1 free" had been changed to "buy 1 get 1 free", which basically means in real terms it's costing me $2.50.  "Wow, they really must want to get rid of this shit" I thought, so I picked it up for curiosity's sake along with a Seo In Young album.

To prove it, here's my personal copy, still in the wrapping, with the price stickers intact.

I'll show you this on my stream if you like.  If you look closely, you can see that there's actually three price stickers layered on top of each other, they just stuck the new lower price on top of the old higher one. Here's a closer look:

If I peel the top layer of the price sticker back, you can see the previous price of $10:

And under that, the original price of $22.  The ink came off on the bottom side because the price sticker is so old:

In Media Asia, when you buy a k-pop album, if they have any left over in their stash behind the counter they don't give you the one off the shelf, instead they give you one from the stash and put the display copy back up.  In this case, the guy behind the counter just let me keep the copy in my hand, which means it was the LAST ONE... that they had been trying to get rid of for AT LEAST A YEAR AND A HALF.

Sydney currently has a population of over 4.5 million people, and NOT ONE of them thought it fit to add a single Piggy Dolls album to their collection even when it was priced at about the same value as a bag of corn chips. No wonder the company completely swapped out the lineup - you cunts weren't fuckin' buying it!  Yeah it was a dick move, not to mention pretty naive of them to think it would be received well, but what the fuck did you expect... for them to keep these girls on who make no money because "they're so talented like omg" and they get a few positive Internet comments here and there?  Get fucked and shove your stupid moralising about how talent doesn't matter anymore up your ass, because in the real world of the music business, it means nothing.  If you want your favourite musical artists to succeed, guess what - you've got to do more than start "vocal threads" on the Internet and post comments about how horrified you are about how superficial everything is, you've actually also got to spend some fucking money, cunt.

So where are these fans of extraordinary vocal performances, who love the old Piggy Dolls, where are THEY at?  My conclusion, and I think this is a very fucking reasonable conclusion to come to, is that they don't fucking exist at all.  It's the same old story - Koreaboo fans around the world want more than anything else to be like fans in Korea, so when they see Korean fans whining about "vocal talent", they also whine about "vocal talent" whenever they get the chance, just to be trendy and cool, but that whining of course doesn't actually translate into anything real, because in their heart of hearts they don't even believe their own bullshit but are just saying it because that's what Koreans say.  I bet they didn't buy the latest Susan Boyle album either - now there's someone trading on vocal talent, cynicism about the looks-based music industry and literally nothing else (certainly not good songs, that's for sure).

Fap to THAT.