Whether you like guys or girls or cats or dogs, you’d have been to a Precious Thots outlet to buy a gift, or simply to window shop.
Considering that the homegrown chain opened its first outlet back in 1996, I reckon that some of us have bought something there for our steads.
As of now, it has ten outlets here in Singapore (though it felt like a hundred outlets) and is expanding overseas, primarily in Malaysia and Hong Kong.
Now, before you get confused and think that Precious Thots is the creator of those Precious Moments figurines, hold your horses: Precious Moments is a US company that designs and manufactures products such as these popular figurines:
And Precious Thots is a…chain selling gifts lah. And it also sells Precious Moments products lah.
But from now on, please call Precious Thots Precious Thoughts.
In fact, I shall correct myself: it should have been called Precious Thoughts since September 2019.
Precious Thots Quietly Changed Its Names to Precious Thoughts Allegedly Due to Internet Memes
Apparently, not many people would have known about this name change until 19 December 2019.
On Thursday, a redditor posted this image in r/Singapore:
…with the caption, “Did the internet culture force them to rebrand”?
Soon, it’s revealed that the change has apparently occurred since September as someone posted this not-so-viral image back in September 2019:
A sad day. My beloved Singapore chain “Precious Thots” has finally caught up with modern internet slang and rebranded as “Precious Thoughts”.
Another piece of our heritage lost. pic.twitter.com/icOnwjRJRW
— Mencius Moldbugman (@moldbugman) September 5, 2019
And ta-da: try Googling the company, or checking its social media accounts, and you’d realise that the company has indeed become Precious Thoughts.
But when it the rebrand occurred?
Interestingly enough, a check on Facebook showed that they changed the name back in October 2018—that’s more than a year ago.
Which means that this isn’t exactly new news—but merely something that’s picked up by the media.
And that leads to the next question: why the change? And why was it done so quietly?
Thot = That Hoe Over There
It’s unclear why the company used “thots” back in 1996; maybe it’s a play on the word “thoughts”, or maybe the founder failed his English.
Nevertheless, it definitely wasn’t due to the fact that since 2012, the word “thot” has a different meaning now, which means “That Hoe Over There”.
I’m pretty sure the founder didn’t have the ability to time travel.
Needless to say, the Internet shows no mercy ever since “thot” got into the Urban Dictionary:
The rebranding doesn’t seem to have been completed, though; Mothership.sg went down to an outlet and still found products bearing the “Precious Thots” brand.
Nevertheless, here’s something we’ve learned today: Precious Moments is different from Precious Thoughts.
Yes, I admit I was confused before writing this article as well.
