Spice Girls tour ends in Toronto next week

Sporty, Ginger, Scary, Baby and Posh announced their world reunion tour with much fanfare last year, but are ending it amid anger from Spice Girls fans who live in cities cut from the tour.

Protest songs, expletive-laced denunciations and even a CD burning - filmed and posted online - emerged when the campy quintet said earlier this month that they would forgo expected appearances in Australia, China, South Africa and Argentina.

Still, their final show Tuesday in Toronto promises to be a massive love-in, with dedicated fans blithely dismissive of rumoured strife among group members.

"I'm not going to lie, I'm kind of glad they're finishing in Toronto because that way I get to see it," says 18-year-old fan Patrice Vandenbos, convinced the group is ending their brief comeback on a high note.

"People are always going to have them as a part of their childhood and that's a really important thing to a lot of people."

Nevertheless, the cancellations have not sat well with dedicated fans on the other side of the globe.

A homemade video posted on the file sharing website YouTube is entitled "Spice Girls CD burning in OZ" and features an assortment of Spice Girls CDs, DVDs, books and solo releases engulfed by flames.

"With this situation they not only lost thousands of fans but they also lost any credibility they had built with the reunion and they gained a lot of backlash from the media and fans," one of the more diplomatic posts says in response to the YouTube video.

"This video doesn't represent 'one crazy fan' but represents what thousands feel."

Celeb watcher Elaine Lui says she's baffled by the backlash, saying she never believed the later concert dates were solidly booked.

"I covered this quite extensively, it didn't ever sound to me like it was going to be this non-stop tour," says Lui, a Vancouver-based gossip columnist for ETalk and blogger for laineygossip.com.

"To me there was nothing really locked down on a lot of locations, there was just the hope."

Those who did get to see the group in the United States, Canada and Europe have largely embraced the over-the-top production, a two-hour cavalcade of lasers, shimmering costumes, male dancers and confetti.

At the Vancouver launch in December, fans turned up in replicas of Geri's famous Union Jack dress and sang along to a kitschy parade of hits that included "Wannabe," "Spice Up Your Life" and "Stop."

Officially, the Spices say they've had to cut the tour short because of family obligations. Posh, the mother of three boys, says it's time to get back to school, while Mel B, Emma and Geri each have babies.

Unofficially, gossips speculate about infighting, but Vandenbos doubts there's much truth to the rumours.

"They have like seven kids between five of them. They all have husbands ... and boyfriends and kids and the kids need to go back to school," she says.

Lui suggests a much simpler reason for the end: "They're bored."