Hi! I'm bootlegpals. For anyone unaware, Sogou is the Chinese search engine on which the second image was found. Here's a link to a search result page, mentioning where the picture came from originally. Looks like the image was either indexed (or posted at the source?? not sure) on the 6th of May, 2011.
The link for the image was not archived, unfortunately. First it asks you to sign in, but if you do sign in, you will see a 404 page.
The person who found both pics and added them to the wiki is mythnokthewolfbat, who also found a photo of it on Flickr and shared it in this discussion. lol
Here's the libaclub photo in slightly better quality:
Wow, this is a truly bonkers story. The only thing that I could compare the story to was that "Evilstick" somebody found in a dollar store back in 2014.
I don't know how much this helps, but I live in the area that WREG is covered in, though I don't have any connections to anyone at the news station.
New update given to me from Bootlegpals on the Chinafake Discord!
Sadly the libaclub source is a dead end. The link provided brings a 404 and trying to sign in and view the toy also gives a 404.
Have you looked at Sogou?
Good suggestion! Have no idea where to begin for search keywords for that site. Should I google translate "boat baby soother" or something like that? Sorry I am a noob to the whole search thing lol.
These are always interesting cases; it seems like they always go viral every couple years since YouTube. More often than not, it's people's ears playing tricks on them. But it's funny/amusing to hear.
These are always interesting cases; it seems like they always go viral every couple years since YouTube. More often than not, it's people's ears playing tricks on them. But it's funny/amusing to hear.
Yeah I think its most likely not actually saying "I hate you", but still fascinating nonetheless. Interestingly this toy happened so early in internet history it may actually be the first toy (or at least one of the first) to get viral for audio pareidolia.
Decided to search this topic more and found some interesting things.
I found an actual forum posts discussing the toy! For a while I was curious to see if any of the forums that the news articles mentioned survived.
First forum post I found, dated November 17th 2003.
I also found a 2017 deviantart post discussing the toy. It links to a google groups talking about the toy from August 23rd 2004. It's very...conspiracy theory... but more evidence on this toy being a hot topic months after taken off shelves.
These are always interesting cases; it seems like they always go viral every couple years since YouTube. More often than not, it's people's ears playing tricks on them. But it's funny/amusing to hear.
And then there's the Elmo "Who wants to die?" potty-training book with sound, which Chadtronic did a video on:
In addition, I remember seeing a video of a Nintendo DS game about babies that used the same sound clip as the first one.
This search is interesting in the fact that this item exists, but is rare to find. I've seen that happen with me when searching for items I want on eBay, most recently with the Jonah VeggieTales VBS stuff and the VeggieTales Khalil puppet. If possible, I might want to help find this interesting toy.