About
Giga Pudding is a make-your-own candy kit manufactured by Japanese toy company Takara Tomy (available for purchase here). While commercials for the product have been circulating the English web for its kitsch value, its popularity skyrocketed on the evening of November 30th, 2010, when 4chan’s moderators decided to embed a clip of Giga Pudding commercial across the individual imageboards, not to mention the wordfilter that turned all user posts into an endless sequence of “PUDDI,” a piece of lyrics (presumably short for “pudding”) repeatedly heard in the commercial.
Aided by 4chan’s high traffic volume and the wordfilter effectively blocking all text-based discussions, Giga Pudding became the subject of internet meme overnight, spawning hundreds of derivative images and the spam-like comments of “PUDDI” eventually spreading over to other websites.
Origin
Packing a serious punch of 20 servings, the DIY dessert set comes with ingredients and a plastic bucket to make one gigantic chocolate pudding for everyone to share. According to this article, the product was first released in 2008.
Wordfilter on 4chan
“PUDDI PUDDI” invasion of 4Chan began around 9pm GMT on November 30th, 2010, when a mod named invisibro posted a thread in /jp/ with the video and referred it to 4chan founder moot. Based on several first-hand reports, it seems that the phenomenon did not start on /b/, but on /tv/.
Only a moment later, moot added the Main Video to /b/ (Random) board at the top of every page, as well as implementing a word-filter that would replace every user post with a bunch of “PUDDIS,” leaving everyone only able to communicate via photos or the email field:
PUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDI
PUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDI
PUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDPUDDIPUDDIPUDDI
PUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDIPUDDI’s
Completely blockaded by the wordfilter, people on /b/ started communicating via subject lines but those too were soon blocked. Finally, everyone resorted to using images only, and less commonly, the email field. Many regulars /b/tards also decided to raid other boards on the site, especially /x/ (Paranormal), while some temporarily fled to other boards, such as /new/, to escape from the “PUDDI” fiasco.
Later on, people realized that the video can be easily blocked by utilizing the AdBlockPlus browser add-on.
After the thing had been going on for a while, and people began to tire, an idea was born. Since the video was hotlinked from youtube, it could be brought down by being flagged. The idea succeeded. Soon thereafter 4chan was changed to hotlink a new version, which however was also flagged after and after a while. The 4chan terror ended at 21:40, 2010-12-1 GMT, when moot removed the wordfilter and the embed altogether.
Popularity & Spread
Prior to its rise on 4chan, the video spread previously through popular blogs and social media in October 2010, experiencing a huge surge in search interest.
Lots of puddi puddi inspired images were quickly made. As always they mostly consist of mixing up old memes with the giga pudding. Eg. puddi bear, handsome puddi. Before the wordfiltering set in, lots of people were responding simply puddi puddi, out of free will, regardless of context. This seems to have spread to among others, youtube, facebook and omegle. This makes it very probable that puddi could take a longterm status similar to that of desu
Other people seemed invested in letting it evolve in a similar direction to rickrolling. Time will tell what will become of this interesting and many-faceted meme
Official Art
Official Giga Pudding Page
It also has another version of the song here “giga” is replaced by “choco.” (click the image of a brown pudding)
The official game Is it a coincidence that the objective is to destroy the puddi?
Official downloadable Giga Pudding Mp3 (costs $0.89)