I Pray for an End to Hello Kitty MerchandizingJuly 12th, 2006 by Adamu |
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Seriously, I am just so sick of this crap:
Are people still interested to see what else the Sanrio people can put Hello Kitty’s face on who else signs up to beat the dead horse that is licensed Sanrio merchandise? If so, get over it! Please! A Hello Kitty guitar simply does not deserve to be front page news these days (as of now it’s the top image at MDN). Last I checked, Hello Kitty merchandise was the Snakes on a Plane of 2 years ago. That is, it all of a sudden started appearing everywhere online, only to spark a quick backlash once it became overexposed.
July 12th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
Sanrio doesn’t put anything on anything. All they do is draw pictures and sell licensing rights to manufacturers, which is how you end up with unexpected products like the infamous Hello Kitty vibrator, or the Hello Kitty fireworks I saw in a Family Mart or something a couple of weeks ago.
July 12th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
Right, I misspoke – Sanrio licenses the logo out to whoever is clever enough to put it on stuff. It’s a similar business principle that explains why we keep seeing these horrible “Jerry’s Subs and Pizza” franchises dotted around the city even though everyone hates them.
July 13th, 2006 at 1:03 am
Kitty-chan was always overexposed, that’s the only thing interesting about it. They come out with more and more crap, and just when you think they’ve run out of ideas for new crap, they always manage to surprise you with the next new crap.
I remember about 10 years ago on the Yamanote-sen, I saw a very elderly man in an impeccably sharp business suit, carrying a very stylish, expensive looking black leather briefcase with very large Kitty logo embossed on it. It was so subtle, it wasn’t colored in, just black stamped on black leather, I did a doubletake, I couldn’t quite believe what I saw. I decided I really liked how it looked, and wished I owned one. Not every man could carry a Kitty-chan briefcase, but he managed to make it look masculine. I like to imagine he was the President of Sanrio.
July 13th, 2006 at 7:07 am
My stepmom, who used to work at a VIP lounge in a major airport in the US, told a story about an old, rather heavyset Sanrio executive who came in one day. He gave her a pen with one of the characters on it. She commented on how cute it was. He replied: “Oh yes, everything in my house has this little guy on it.”
After that, she was afraid to let me come back to Japan.
July 13th, 2006 at 8:22 am
I can’t believe it’s news simply because those have been available in the US for months now. I nearly tripped over one when I went into a music store in the mall. They had been selling Hello Kitty pick-guards for years, and apparently her face just wasn’t big enough that way. At least the guitars are genuine Fender Stratocasters, so the people stupid enough to get duped into buying this thing are at least getting a guitar that could last them a few decades.
July 13th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
No Matt, the Hello Kitty guitars you saw in the US music stores are not genuine Stratocasters, those were Fender Squires. The Squire is a cheapo student-grade version of the Strat, it only has 1 pickup where the Strat has 3.
That being said, I seem to recall that when read the original article, it said there are 3 of the ultra-expensive custom-made Hello Kitty Strats, two were sold in the US and only 1 in Japan. I’m not sure what that means.
July 26th, 2006 at 1:27 am
A high-end one just sold for a cool 2.52 million yen . . .
http://www.business-i.jp/news/sou-page/news/200607260026a.nwc