SaveToby.com — the Final Chapter

December 2, 2006 · by · in Vegetarian

You may recall that I’ve blogged several times about SaveToby, the site that threatened to kill and eat Toby the cute rabbit if people didn’t donate a total of $50,000. People went bonkers about the threat to a bunny (as opposed to livestock). Then, Toby’s owners changed their story, saying that they required people to buy 100,000 copies of their book by Thanksgiving or Toby would get it.

It’s hard to know if these fraudsters have ever told the truth, but surprise! Toby allegedly is still alive. (And, I’m reasonably confident, they didn’t sell 100,000 copies of their book). According to their website (as of today):

Toby Has Finally Been Saved!!!!!

News Flash – In an unexpected twist with the story of Toby, the rabbit that was going to be cooked and eaten if the owners did not get enough donations to stop it from happening, Bored.com has taken over the SaveToby.com website and saved Toby from certain death. The owner of Bored.com heard about Toby on the NBC Nightly News and read about the controversy in the many newspapers and magazines savetoby.com was featured in over the past year, and decided to put an end to this atrocity. Terms of the deal are undisclosed, but Toby has been quoted as saying he is very happy with the arrangement.

Other than the joy of saving a cute and loving animal from a cruel demise, Bored.com gets nothing out of this, so please show your support by visiting some of their websites:

Unexpected? Hardly. I predicted in January: “the hucksters won’t sell 100,000 copies of their book (who the heck is buying this book anyway?), yet miraculously Toby will find a way to survive the latest pratfall.” And so, Toby lives (allegedly).

Meanwhile, from Bored.com’s perspective, this is a straight traffic acquisition. SaveToby.com has a PR6 and presumably still generates significant traffic, so Bored.com probably paid the cash value of the new ad inventory. As a result, I don’t advise visiting SaveToby.com. If you go, watch out for the multiple pop-up ads, and clicking on the text ads (such as the casino links) probably isn’t a good idea.

In any case, with Toby putatively no longer in the frying pan (literally or figuratively), I close the book on this saga. Live long, Toby, and may your parsley always be fresh. As for Toby’s owners, I suspect karma isn’t through with them yet.