Cheeky ‘real-pig’ piggy bank sparks uproar
“People aren’t even understanding this is a default of the way the world works,” says Colin Hart, who grew up on a sheep farm outside Belfast. “I know piglets die of natural causes.”
PHOTOSHOPPED IMAGEThe cheeky.com hasn’t actually sold any taxidermied piglets refashioned as piggy banks. But that hasn’t stopped the Winnipeg Humane Society and hundreds of people around the world from condemning them.
“Most people understand it’s a bit of a joke,” a somewhat rattled Colin Hart told the Star on Wednesday. “We’re not harming any animals. We’re not even considering it. It’s quite ridiculous what’s happening.”
Hart, whose day job is devising creative concepts for advertising agencies, created the Cheeky website as an outlet for his more outrageous ideas. Last year’s large Suitcase Stickers, which make your luggage look like it’s full of money, a smuggled body, or bricks of cocaine, are now a hit around the world, for example.
The real-piglet bank came to him when he worked in Vancouver next door to a taxidermy shop. It’s priced at $4,000 “to be a little out of the reach of people. Anybody, really.”
Nobody has ever ordered one. In fact, nobody paid much attention to it, other than a few people who got the joke, until a few days ago when someone alerted the Winnipeg Humane Society, and the CBC wrote about their reaction.
“It's such an incredible in-your-face trivialization of what was once a living being,” Aileen White of the humane society told the CBC. “It just demonstrates such callousness and insensitivity.”
“It’s kind of frustrating. I’m getting really hateful emails and death threats,” said Hart, 34, who moved back to Ireland recently after his Vancouver stint. “We haven’t actually sold any. They just think we murder piglets.”
The website, pushing the joke, promises to only use piglets that have died of natural causes and says the product would take 12 months for delivery.
“People aren’t even understanding this is a default of the way the world works,” said Hart, who grew up on a sheep farm outside Belfast. “I know piglets die of natural causes.”
He’s telling angry emailers: “We love animals and would never do anything to hurt, harm or for that matter kill an animal for the reasons of making a 'Piglet Bank'.”
If someone really wanted to fork over $4,000, Hart could produce the taxidermied piglet bank. The image on the site, however, is an altered photograph of a live piglet.
Hart hasn’t commissioned a piglet bank for himself and isn’t likely to. His favourite toy, he said, is an inflatable moose head he bought in New Zealand.
“I know the guy who designed it. He also got some hate mail. And it looks pathetic.”
(the star.com)
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