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Alan Brender, "Pink Tsunami: The Hello Kitty Kawaii Wave that has Swept the World" (Headpress, 2026)
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- [00:00]
A
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B
Hi, this is Rebecca Buchanan, host at New Book Network and today I'm here with Alan Bender to talk about his latest book, Pink Tsunami, the hello Kitty Kauai wave that has swept the world. Alan, thanks for being here with me today.
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C
Hi. This is the book A Little Kitty. Actually it's called Pink Tsunami. The hello Kitty Kawaii waved and has swept the world as Rebecca said. So it's a chronology of various things that happened over the decades to make her a billion dollar asset. The last figure I got that she's earned over $81 billion for Sanrio, the company that created her. So she is a very lucrative icon and many people say that she's the most popular female animal icon in the world. She's only behind Mickey Mouse at number two. She has been losing some popularity in recent years, but her 50th anniversary last year was help bring back some more steam to her popularity. You had a question for me.
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B
I was going to ask you to talk a little bit about why you want so she's really popular. Why did you want to write about hello Kitty? Kind of. How did this book come to be for you?
- [02:10]
C
Well, it was serendipitous. I received a notice from a publisher called Theme Park Press and they wanted to print an article I'd written about a Disney artist. And then when they presented it to me, asked, well, how much are you going to pay? Because previously I had sold articles to be included in books and I got some kind of payment. But he said there's no payment. And I said, well, that's not very good. So then I tried to think how I get some benefit out of it. And since he was promoting theme parks, I said, well, have you ever thought about doing a book on hello Kitty theme parks? And he had to think a while. Then he came back to me and said, yeah, let's do that. So that was about 10 years ago. That was the start. But along the way there are a whole lot of problems that erupted. So I proceeded to start writing the book. I had no particular affection for the character. I knew she existed because I lived in Japan and I had worked on the Encyclopedia of Japan land volume Encyclopedia by Kodansha in English about Japan. And I got enamored with the popular culture of Japan. And so she's part of the popular culture, but that wasn't the main emphasis at that time. But it did make me interested in the pop culture. And so it gave me some impetus to go ahead with this book. So then I was writing it and I was working full time as dean of Lakeland University, Japan, a branch campus of a Wisconsin university. So I couldn't work on it full time. And there were a lot of problems at the university that needed addressing. So I proceeded at a kind of snail's pace. I went to visit Puroland with one of my own, a student who was a journalism major. And that sparked more interest because I had seen the so called theme park. It's actually just one big building with different sites in it and one ride, a boat trip through along the manmade river, going past different dioramas. So after that I moved ahead more fully and I completed much of the book when I was moving the chapters from one file to another file and I lost them all with no backup. So I was disheartened, of course, and at first I just wanted to give up. But eventually one of the faculty members, who's much more depth at computers than I am, was able to rescue some of the chapters. So with those few chapters rescued, I had incentive to go back and start over again with those chapters and then build on them again. So that went along pretty well. And then so much time had passed that the publisher was getting nervous about the book and eventually he pulled out. Especially after the COVID pandemic, which devastated theme parks like it devastated much else of our lives. And during that period I was extremely busy at the university because we had to connect to online classes. But it was only that we were changing ownership in Japan to the American ownership. We also had to get permission from the Ministry of Education. We also had to get a relocation permission from the Ministry. And we also were moving from a two year to a four year in graduate programs. So that was all on my shoulders. So there wasn't too much being done there during this time. The publisher decided that maybe this was not the book for him. So I was publisher less and just like Kitty was nameless family less and homeless when she first got started. So I just kept hunting for publishers. I tried for a while a self publishing company and spent some Money, too much money. And eventually it didn't go anywhere. So I found a website from Canada that offered different publishers that would hire that were looking for properties. So eventually I was very lucky to find Head press and he was the editor. Turned out to be fantastic. And even after an advance, which is not too frequent these days. So back I went to the drawing boards. Of course, there was a lot of updating I had to do. I mean, there was Covid, of course, which caused sales of everything to go down, particularly theme parks, but also the cafes and other live venues. And also sales were not very good because people were not buying hello Kitty products during that period. So that kind of brings us more to date. Took about 2, 3 years from the time that David Kirkhase agreed to publish the book to actually getting it into the bookstores. Just recently got into bookstores a couple months ago. It's on sale at Amazon and different online publications. Book Barnes and Noble has it and I'm sure there are other outlets for it. Again, this is the book just in case you want to see it again. This is a little mascot.
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B
Can you talk a little bit about hello Kitty's history? I really love that she is three apples tall. Yeah. How did she start? How did hello Kitty start? How did hello Kitty sort of come to be?
- [09:37]
C
Yeah, it's amazing how many people know about her. I mean, many people know because their children were followers of Kitty. Other people know for other reasons. And also there was the big fuss in 2014 when Christian Yano, author of a very academic book about hello Kitty, declared that she was not a cat. I think that was a publicity stunt by Sanrio, the company that promotes hello Kitty and created hello Kitty. But it was a worldwide outpouring of interest. Even Time magazine wrote an article about it. I'll come back to that later when I come to that period. But that was another resurgence. And that was for her 40th anniversary. That was her anniversaries. The 35th, 40th and 50th all created new attention for her. So let me go back to the beginning. How did she begin? She entered in the world as a decoration on a cheap plastic purse. Compared to Mickey Mouse, who debuted in a 1927 movie called Whoops Boat, Steamboat Willie. Most American animal characters entered the world on movies, comic books, or comic strips and newspapers, but not Kitty. She entered on the plastic purse. In the first year, she had no name. She was called Namai no Nai Shiroi Kaneko. It means the white kitten without a name. So she stayed that Way for almost a year. She was nameless, homeless and familyless during that period. Then they created a backstory for her. Let's see. I had some notes here. So she was given a name. She got the name Kitty White. What's interesting, that though she was created Japan, they had her living in London. It's never clear whether she's supposed to be a British citizen or not. The other confusing factor is that she liked things American. She liked apple pie. She spoke in a North American accent in cartoons that were in English. So I'll try to explain that a little bit. During this time period in Japan, there was a rush for British, I think, 19th century children's stories, Beatrix Potter, Peter the Rabbit and Alice in Wonderland. So these were very popular before Sesame Street. But at the same time, Japan was under occupation of the US from 1945 to 1952. And the Okinawa island didn't get released from American occupation until 1972, just two years before Kitties got a name. Only one year when she actually got created. So that's kind of interesting facts. Her family, her family consisted of her twin sister Mimi, two parents, Mary and what's her father's name, J. George White, and one set of grandparents. Their last name was White. So presumably they were the paternal grandparents. That might be an indication of Japanese culture because in Japanese culture the woman joins the man's family. So the maternal grandparents are not so important at that time. These days it's different. But in 1972, there was still end of the Shola era. It was sort of the period when Japan didn't know where it was. I mean, it was under American occupations for so long and as I said, Okinawa until just a couple years before that. And so it was Japanese, but it was also somewhat Americanized. And then these popular British characters confused it further among children. So she was set up in London with this family, the parents, grandparents and sister. The sister is identical, except she was the alter ego. The sister shy, she more interested in finding a husband. She was a kind of typical Japanese character from the pre war period. But Kitty was different. She was outgoing. She made a lot of friends. Her motto was, you can never have too many friends. Of course not. Her motto, Sanrio gave it to her. Everything came from Sanrio or her designers or the marketplace. But it's easier just to attribute it to her. Also, she wore different clothes. She wore yellow clothes. And at that period of time, Kitty was not pink. She was red, kind of blood red. She had a red bow and she had red clothes. Most of the time. Whereas Mimi, the twin sister, wore yellow and also Mimi wore her bow on the opposite side. Kitty had hers on the left side and Mimi had hers on the right side. Amazed that I know these kind of trivial facts, but some of them stick with you after a while. So she also had some friends that were created along with her? Well, not exactly. About a year later, only two friends initially. Later she had many, many, because they had many more products to sell. They needed to give Kitty a break from all those products, or at least to co star with her on the products. So the first two characters were my Melody, a rabbit and Kathleen, a rabbit. What's interesting with the characters? Not just these two characters, but her other friends were penguins. And let's see what else she had. She had many different kinds dogs. Why would a cat be friends with a dog? She was friends with a mole. Various kinds of creatures. Those all came later. So initially it just was two rabbits. What's interesting is that the other characters, like dear Daniel, who became her boyfriend and supposedly grew up with her with not created till 1999, but suddenly he goes back into her history. So they could move people back and forth, or should say characters back and forth in time, because they're just fictional backstories. So what happened with Kathy is that after 30 years of being Kathy, a man called Dick Bruno discovered that she looked very much. Well, he must have discovered much earlier. But he finally filed suit against Henriel that they had used his character. He had a character called Miffy, very popular in Europe. And he claimed that Kathy. And he even said that Kitty looked too much like Miffy. But he only followed a sude Sanrio for Kathy. So he filed a suit in an Amsterdam court. And the court declared that Sanrio could not sell kiddie products in Holland, Belgium or Luxembourg. So this went on and then they also had to make a financial agreement. This happened. The court case was in 2010 and they reached the financial gate agreement in 2011. That's the year of the very disastrous earthquake in Japan. So the two sides decided, instead of giving money to the side in the Netherlands, that both sides would contribute money to Japanese relief. So. But also Sanrio would remove Kathy from all those from existence. They expunged her from all the backstories, they boo booed her from all the shops, stores, whatever product she was on. And she was gone. She didn't exist anymore. She never existed, according to Sanrio, after this. So the characters get moved backwards and forwards. I also wanted to talk about briefly here and maybe later about her Designers. She only had three major designers in Japan. I mean three major designers, I think worldwide. In fact, she had local designers that helped conform her to local customs and so forth. I'll come come back to that later. But I want to talk about the first three. I just want to make sure I have the dates correctly. The first designer was Yuko Shimizu. She was from 1973. So she created the nameless Kitty and saw her through two years of having a name. And then she quit Sanrio to get married. At that time it was customary for women to get to leave the company when they got married. Very different nowadays. But now Japan has a woman prime Minister. They would never ever thought of that in 1972. So anyways, the next designer was. So she had Kitty sitting down sideways on the purse. She has the name hello over her head. It was common in Japan even then, I think stemming from the occupation period to use English as decoration on advertisements. So hello was just a decoration. It had no meaning except that it became part of her name. Surname white didn't stick very much except in biographies or some other things. But hello stuck. So everybody now knows her as hello Kitty. Later I'll talk about some satire about that name. But right now I'll leave that for time being. Now the third designer is the most interesting because she's the longest serving. Sanrio held a contest for the next designer when Setsuko left. And the winner was Yuko Yamaguchi. So they held the conference in 1979 and they named Yuko a designer in 1980. And she's still the designer but now she's also marketer and a high executive in Sanyo. In 1984, Yuko Yamaguchi spent a year in San Francisco and was. While she was there, she became much more outspoken. She became more of a marketer and she created a new character called Tiny Tim. It's a teddy bear, inanimate object, but it has its own life. So when Kitty had a pet, at first the Sunrise people were not in favor of this teddy bear. They just thought it didn't suit Kitty. But they did experiment a little. And they had some petty towels that they were selling with this carrot on it. And it sold like hotcakes. So then she was vindicated, Yamaguchi was vindicated and they started giving her more leeway in what she can design and how she should be marketing. She in that case is healed Kitty. So Kitty is always manipulated by these people. So from then Designer had more say. In 1976 Sanrio set up a Film division in California. The owner of Sanria, Shintaro Tsuji, always was in competition with Walt Disney. So he wanted his own studio and he hired very famous actors like Katharine Hepburn and many others at the same time. But none of Hearst films worked. All of them were duds except one. There was one documentary he made called who Are the How did they get 19 children? This film became very popular in the US and won an Academy Award for best documentary. So Suji was very proud of this award and frequently showed it off to various people. So, but the reason this film company is important because at the same time they decided to market hello kitty in the U.S. they probably wouldn't have marketed her in the U.S. so soon, except they started a film company. So they opened a store in San Jose, California. This is an area that's heavily populated by Japanese Americans. So initially she was only marketed in the Asian communities and along the Pacific coast, the Little Tokyos, the Little Koreas, the Chinatowns. That's where they market her. And sales were okay, but they were not very noteworthy. So they brought in some American designers. None of them stood out, but they had enough input that they made her more popular among American young people. And initially the target was small girls, young girls under the age of 10 or 11. But then these girls were growing out of hello Kitty and they hard to get the new generation to join, but they, they probably did. But they wanted to get bigger markets, so they started expanding into different age groups. So around the time Yamaguchi took over, they started. They started thinking about nostalgia markets. Those young girls who had grown up and become wives and mothers. They marketed appliances and dishes and kitchenware, things like that, to get them to participate in the market. So the market in many ways is 90% women, maybe even higher. And the market and then the market is divided into age groups. So initially it was the young girls, then it became the young marrieds. We kind of skipped over to teens, but they came back to them later. Then middle aged women and finally now they're doing a lot of marketing of objects for elderly women, pendants and things like that. There's a place in Tokyo called Grandma's Harajuku shopping area for older women. So that's where they started marketing these and became popular. Sometimes they just bought it for their grandchildren, but other times they bought it for themselves, depending what the product was. So the US market was begun very early, only two years after Kitty got a name and identity. What's also interesting, when she got an identity, that everything was kind of factual except her Height and weight. They used a little whimsy with that. They said she was six apples tall. Three apples. She weighed three apples. Why apples? I don't know. It would make her pretty small, which is not the way she looks in cartoons. The other notable feature about her is she has no mouth. And that has caused a lot of controversy among particularly feminists and Asian Americans. Asian American women. They feel that because she has no vow, she has no voice, she cannot espouse anything. She can only be a nebbish or be a Suzy Wong or Madam Butterfly. So now Sanrio says she has no mouth because you can put your own feelings into her. The fact she's expressionless, you can imagine a feeling. So if you feel sad, then she looks sad. If you feel happy, she looks happy, et cetera. The designer Yamaguchi also jumped on that bandwagon and used the mouth as a selling point, saying that she can make you feel good. And she said that when the only hello Kitty doll she has in her house is one that's sleeping. Said that otherwise she'd feel like she'd have to be working if she had her eyes open. So she has her sleeping. The other market they opened early was the European market. They opened, I think, a office in Munich in 1980. Surprisingly, they didn't tap the Asian market until 1990, which is now the most vibrant market. But they didn't know that then. In the European market, it's the weakest market, except for uk. UK also shares the hello Kitty phenomenon. But the rest of Europe, I think they like Miffy much better than hello Kitty, or they just don't care about characters. I have no idea why they are not so popular. I mean, for example, there's hello Kitty cafes in almost every country except European countries. One has opened in Italy, I think, even more recently. Just a couple months ago, one opened in Germany. But compared to 5 opening in one year in England, it's not very much. There are big hello Kitty cafes in Irvine, California, and in Las Vegas. There's several in Las Vegas and most in Canada got its first hello Kitty Just Cafe just a year or two ago. So anyway, the Asian market was a very phenomenal market because people became feverish about it, particularly when they gave special limited edition prizes to go with whatever they're selling. For example, at McDonald's, they gave a. They had an accident. Because of that, people wanted these dolls so badly that they buy multiple orders of McDonald's, then throw them in the trash and go off with the doll. But one time the store was still closed. There was a big crowd waiting to get in. And they're all pushing from behind. And it broke the glass doors. And seven people got into. So that's kind of a negative aspect of that popularity. Another negative aspect was child labor. They were used particularly in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was a big market for hello Kitty. And she discovered Hong Kong was also pro labor at that time. I mean, that's before it got absorbed by China again. It was still under British rule. So they found that one factory had a lot of girls as young miss, 13, 14 years old, working 15 hours a day and sleeping on boards. Boards instead of mattresses. And so they publicized this and they sent all the girls back to their homes, but they didn't pay for them to go. The girls had to find their own way back. There might have been some boys working there, too, I don't know. But they emphasized the girls. So those are kind of negative aspects in the Japanese, in the Asian market. Let me see. I want to go to the. Well, she ended up with lots of friends besides my Melody. She had, as I said, different kinds of animals, which is kind of change in Japanese children who don't really mix with people of different cultures or who are very different from themselves. So that was something they were looking at. There was Keroppia Frog, but she was one of her friends. She even had her own pet cat called Charming that her father bought for her, which is one of the things they might mention when we got to the controversy about whether she's a cat. Because how can a cat have a pet cat? So she was. Eventually they decided she was an anthropomorphic girl who's in the body of a cat. If you want to swallow that. Not many people did. A lot of them. Other people hated the fact that they said she was not a cat. There was a huge controversy at Kitty Khan, a big convention, 25,000 people in Los Angeles, that put her back on the map. Daniel, dear Daniel, who was created in 1990. I became her boyfriend, was called Daniel Starr. And probably they think he's from a movie called Melody, a British movie which a boy and girl fall in love. And the girl's name is Melody and the boy's name is Daniel. And so. But this kitty ends up with him, not my Melody, but. So the character's name was Melody Perkins in the movie and the boy's name was Daniel something. Okay, now, there's one thing I regret not doing for this book is I didn't include a chapter of the cartoons, the animated cartoons for a Number of reasons. But I still think it's a big gap. The cartoons were so different from her other images because in the cartoons she had a mouth because she had to speak or eat. And every cartoon, not even every cartoon, every episode of the cartoon she was something different. In one she was married and had a child called Melody. There are a number, there's one series about takes on fairy tales. There are many, many series in Japan. But there are also a number of English language series. So she. Well, for the film they created a character that kind of transcends both worlds. But because character was an anti character called Kuromi. Kuromi is a punk looking animal. It's hard to tell whether she's a cat or a rabbit because she wears a hat, black hat like a witch and has a skull on it. And her favorite food, consider apple pie or cocoa cookies like my Melody and hello Kitty. She likes scallions, she craves them. In fact, her clothes are all black and she has a writing and I forgot some kind of strange creature. So she was there. Another character was the only one created for boys. Vad Martin, he's a penguin, say to all kinds of animals. And some say he resembles Bart Simpson. He came around 1993 and he played. He had roles like basketball player or masculine roles. So he was different. Another inanimate object that became very popular was Gugetama. Gugetama is an egg yolk. Now how can egg yolk be a character? Well, they put a couple of eyes on it and some small appendages on the white of the egg. And this character was said to be extremely lazy. And he was very popular among Japanese businessmen because it's kind of opposite of what they're expected to be. They're expected to work 12, 14 hours a day and even on weekends, not so much these days, but especially in those early days. And they had a series on Japanese TV of Muritama where it's only three minutes long because they said he couldn't sustain longer. And Japanese businessman would be late for work to watch that show. Which is unusual because back in the 1980s when you went to a train station, you'd see all these people lined up at the provost calling their offices that they're being late even if it's only five or ten minutes. So all that's gone now. Let me see everything. Let me see if you have any question up to this point.
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B
I don't know, you've been talking for a while. So my one question, my sort of final question that I've Been thinking about is what do you hope people kind of learn or get reading your book and thinking about hello Kitty, what do you want them to kind of leave with about her and about her kind of sort of place in popular culture?
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C
Well, it likes to remind people that she's Japanese. Sometimes I think in the backs of people's minds, they know she's Japanese, but she's not overt Japanese like manga or anime. She's kind of everybody's mascot. So I think she has a kind of what doesn't. What appeals to her and what makes people enemies. So, for example, the enemies include disillusioned people, especially after the 2014 announcement. She's not a cat. So because they're disillusioned, they become anti Kitty. The boyfriends of women who are fanatics. They feel left out. They feel their house is cluttered with this they call junk because you want all these little kiddie boys. So there are those who just natural critics. They don't like anything that's cute or different. And there are those who want to make fun of her. They want to. So they call her Hell Kitty or hello Titty, things like that. So there are a lot of reasons why people are pro or against her. So I wanted to present all of it because the fan books only stick with the good things. There seem to be three types of books that in existence. Two major types. One is the fan books. No, three types. One is the fan books. Another is the financial kind of book, like Beltzen and Bremer, who wrote a book on the billion dollar cap. And they've approached it from the financial aspect. And then there's the academic approach that Cristiano presented in her book. So this one's different from those because I'm trying to show why she's popular in bulk pop culture. And it's through all the different products. I mean, for example, hello Kitty theme parks. Well, all she does is decorate the rides in those theme parks and humans dress like hello Kitty, greeting people. So there's so those. But it's a big business and is same with so in the academic books, I think. Well, there's only one major one that I know of. It's kind of heavy reading, but very thorough, a great book. But I think most people don't want to wade through that. So I thought I'd present. I mean, this is after I got interested in her, I thought I'd present a different side. Well, I did want to talk a little bit about the cafes.
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B
Okay, yeah, sure. Do you want to share a Little bit.
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C
These cafes, all different kinds of them. Nowadays the one in Irvine, California has a bar attached. So after five o' clock the bar opens, but it closes at nine in school nights and and living on weekends, which is kind of unusual. It's one of the few permanent cafes. Most hello Kitty cafes are. Puppets in existence for a few weeks or months. For example, in 2024 there was a pop up at Somerset House in London because there was an exhibition called Cute and hello Kitty was the center of it and they created a cafe to go with it. There are several cafes set up in England by a department store to promote hello Kitty and there have been pop ups in other parts of the world. They also were set up in. There was one at Changi Airport in Singapore that was very elegant, had nice plants in it, orchids and other live plants that had very nice ambiance. It was open 24 hours. The first day it was open there was a five hour wait to get in at four o' clock in the morning. But it was very popular and it had very good food. Most of the hello Kitty cafes people complained the food was mediocre to bad, horrible. Said one person. The theme parks had their hello Kitty cafes and recently there have been several established in Las Vegas. So these cafes, well, going back to Shangi only lasted three days, three years. Even though it was very popular because of licensing disagreements. Sanrio has a heavy hand in the licensing area. And in this area they wanted to micromanage these cafes. For example, in China they had a dim sum restaurant but they wanted to test every single dish. And there were 67 dim sum dishes and they wanted mostly they checked at least eight times. So these chefs had to keep making more and more. So they got fed up. So this, I think the same thing happened to this hello Kitty movie. For 15 years they've been trying to make a hello Kitty movie in Hollywood. Even Variety has had articles about this movie. And it would go so far and then it would stop and then oh, and I heard about it and find out that whatever reason the licensee wouldn't come through. And most recently was supposed to be. The movie was supposed to be released for the 50th anniversary. Well, they never made Different Beat even though Variety had printed and other places had printed stories about it coming. The same with a big theme park in China. They had one big theme park which is the biggest one in the world. But they had another one they wanted to put on the coast and one on the coast and suddenly nothing more. Heard about it in 2024 but it was supposed to open in 2025, so you would think they would be pretty much on their way, but it wasn't. And then I investigated and found out that all the CERA knows Empty Field and they had changed the license, they had changed the zoning for it had been zoned as an amusement type place and had been rezoned as a residential. So that indicated that that project was over. So there's a lot of this kind of manipulation and. Well, let me. Well, that leads me to the celebrities. Let me just bring those. Because the licensing is with broadcast celebrities. Because there was. Shintaro Tsuji had a son named kunihiko and in 1980 he appointed him international director and started the Asian market. And then Kunihikyo was also in charge of the California operation. And then he hired a man named Ray Hatoyama. He had an MBA degree from Famous American University and he was interested in licensing. But he started licensing to all different kinds of people. And elder Tsuji was unhappy with it because she was starting to appear on the accident. Suitable like condoms and other kinds of. There was one, a urinal pad that says aim here, not on the wall or floor. So it was kind of. So anyways, Hatayama was on the track to becoming president because Tsuji was getting quite old at this time. But what happened is that this son Kunihiko died and then Hatayama was on his own and the old man was not too much in favor of him moving forward. So in 2016 there was a big meeting of Sanrio people. And at that meeting they were supposed to decide on a successor for Shintaro Tsuji. And at that meeting they pushed Hatoyama out and named a grandson who was a little too young for a job. So his mother took over for a while, Yuko Tsuji. And then I think in 2022,
- [51:27]
B
the
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C
young, the grandson became president and Shintaro Tsuji stepped down at the age of 92 and his grandson was 27. He was the youngest or maybe 29, the youngest CEO of a major company, at least to me, Joe Penn. So that was different. So I just want to bring it all. Talk about celebrities. Mahatayama was very keen on celebrities and he started encouraging. Well in the 1990s even he's. Kunihiko started getting some celebrities like Mariah Carey and several others to do it. And then in 2002, Lisa Loeb put out an album called hello Lisa which kind of imitated hello Kitty theme song and kind of music. Then others, I think the major star that they got was Lady Gaga. She was in one of their stores looking at things. And a clerk who was not too tuned in and the papa coach went to the boss, said, this woman is trying to ask for free goods. And the boss said, well, what's her name? She posed by the name lady something Gaga. Yeah. And I said, oh. So the manager, who was more happ. He immediately offered her some hello Kitty products. He said they would never pay. They ever write a check for her, but they would give her products. So
- [53:19]
B
she.
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C
Some months later, I think San asked her to do a promotion for her. So she did this promotion with a Pringles designer. And among the things she wore was a dress decorated with hello Kitty and plush dolls. And she also had some other. She had one that was more like a panties. And she said. She patted and said, this is my puddy. It was kind of bizarre, but when you have those kind of people. And then Mariah Carey, no, Katy Perry went to the hello Kitty con and had a tattoo imprinted on her inside her finger. And that made Vietnamese. So Hatoyama was quite happy. And he kind of liked hobnobbing Hilton sisters. Both of them are great fans. And Yamaguchi, the designer, became friends of the Hilton sisters. And she, Yamaguchi, also was responsible for collaborators. The first one was a man named Frank. His last name was Frank, and he did. His character was Julius Monkey. And so she met him in San Francisco at a signing party. And when she looked at the picture, she saw that Julius was eating Kellogg's cereal out of a hello Kitty bowl. So she contacted Frank and then they did a collaboration and they had Julius pushing hello Kitty and a wheelbarrow as the design. So the collaboration and the stars made the sales go astronomical in the mid 2010s to 2019. 2020 was the disaster period, but for everybody, not just for them.
- [55:39]
B
So, Ellen, thank you for talking with me about hello Kitty in your book.
- [55:42]
C
Okay, well, I hope people will think about purchasing it.
- [55:46]
B
It's out now so people can find it, you know, wherever they're sort of looking for books again. Pink Tsunami. The hello Kitty kaw wave that has swept the world. Alan Brunder, thanks for talking with me on New Books Network.
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D
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