Taipei Times

Hello Kitty talk starts brawl
A scuffle broke out late Thursday night between a group of Japanese tourists and locals at a restaurant in Wanhua (萬華), Taipei as result of language barriers and miscommunication. The group of seven Japanese were giggling and talking about the “Hello Kitty” magnets which have recently a stirred frenzy among fans and collectors in Taiwan. Thinking that the Japanese were laughing at them, a table of Taiwanese patrons next to them—about 10 in all—approached the group and somehow a fight started.

The magnets in question are part of a promotion by 7-11 (which some readers may not know is now actually a Japanese company) here in Taiwan. This year is the 30th anniversary of Hello Kitty, and I believe that there are 30 unique magnets to collect. One random Hello Kitty magnet is given away free with every purchase at the convenience store, encouraging quite a lot of repeat business from obsessive collectors. Naturally under these conditions it is virtually impossible to avoid accumulating a couple of these things and I managed to find two in my desk, one still in the wrapper and one opened, so I present them to you here so you can see that they were clearly worth fighting over.

On the package they call the effect where ridges in the plastic reveal a second image when you change the viewing angle ‘3D.’ I remember it well from a plastic He-man ruler I had when I was about 7 years old. Just by slowly rotating the ruler you could watch an epic battle for the future of Eternia unfold. In this case the effect is used for nothing nearly so cool, but in an extra-crappy way doesn’t even show two different pictures but only makes Helly Kitty’s parents or whatever disappear and reveal a 7-11 logo.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 25th, 2005 at 4:00 am and is filed under Japan, Taiwan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.