Hello Kitty Fan: Singapore

Spotlight: Singapore's Connie Sim

Below is a video of one of the many Hello Kitty collectors out there-- specifically in Singapore. Her vast collection is something out of a fantasy world that even beats out Puroland's version because it's a kittified home to a T. It's like a shrine to Hello Kitty in every sense of the word.

And most importantly, it's kittified in style and elegance. Something that I have been searching as well when it comes to Sanrio's characters.

You can continue reading below or read the full article here and here.

Connie Sim's husband is giving a tour

By Bryna Singh

Hello Kitty fan spends $1.2m on dream home

In food supplier Connie Sim's house in Katong, it is impossible to turn a corner without bumping up against Hello Kitty merchandise.

The entire third floor is covered in floor-to-ceiling wallpaper featuring the Sanrio character's face and name. A 3-D mould of Hello Kitty's face is replicated on all of her cupboards, doors and drawers.

Not to mention the hundreds of knick-knacks crowding every corner of her semi-detached house.

In communal areas such as the kitchen, you can see a Hello Kitty toaster, coffee grinder, juice maker, slow cooker and dim sum baskets.

Even in private spaces including the bathrooms, Hello Kitty peers out at you from toilet paper, toilet seat covers, soap and laundry detergent.

Madam Sim, a youthful-looking 60, says she spent about $1.2 million in 2013 on Hello Kitty-themed renovations. This excludes the money she blew on collectibles in the past 10 years.

Which is why her next statement is pretty shocking.

"I'm not particularly into Hello Kitty," she says in Mandarin. "I just like the colours pink and white."

For this interview, she is dressed in a red T-shirt with Hello Kitty faces and a black flared skirt. Her voluminous coiffure - blown into shape by her maid - features girlish bangs.

She elaborates: "I wanted my house to have a theme and since my friends like Hello Kitty, I decided I would have a classy, first-rate Hello Kitty home where everything looks fantastic."

It is clear that even in the world of Hello Kitty devotees - known for their obsessive collections - her home is an epic shrine to the cartoon cat without a mouth.

During a tour of the house, she takes the team up to her master bedroom, where she keeps Hello Kitty mobile phones, hair dryers, steamers, irons, and sewing machines.

"Some of these I've never used, but I just like collecting them," she says. "I don't ask the price. I just buy."

She gets her items from a supplier here whose shop she visits every month, but also regularly buys items from places such as Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan, spending about $10,000 a year on her hobby.

The divorcee says her three children aged 40, 36 and 34 do not mind her spending on Hello Kitty. "They say as long as Mummy is happy, they are happy."

On the third floor of the house, Hello Kitty is plastered on cushions, carpets, fans, lights and cosmetic covers.

One room contains Madam Sim's Hello Kitty clothing collection, which includes at least 100 T-shirts, 30 sets of pyjamas and many pieces of underwear.

"I also have a Hello Kitty G-string," she says, rummaging through a neat pile of underwear in the drawer.

"Do you want to see it?"

After this reporter's polite refusal, she leads the team to the basement, where there are two Hello Kitty-themed rooms for karaoke and mahjong games. These are open to her friends and family members during gatherings, which she organises regularly.

Her rationale?

"If you've done up your home nicely, you cannot be selfish and just enjoy it yourself. I believe in being generous."

One of her friends, sales coordinator Linda Yeo, 39, says: "She first welcomed me to her home two years ago. I took so many pictures. It's like a Hello Kitty museum here."

Madam Sim says she has her fair share of naysayers - people who told her she is wasting her time or criticised her obsession with a cartoon character. But she respectfully disagrees.

"I'm not throwing money away," she says. "This is going to last me for many years, beyond the life of a million-dollar sports car."

- See more at: AsiaOne


Home of Singapore's biggest Hello Kitty fan ever

By Mavis Ang

This Hello Kitty fan got The Interior Library to customise every square inch of her home to match her overwhelming love for the Sanrio character.

Connie's favourite shop in Singapore to get her Hello Kitty fix is Kai Kai Gifts at Chinatown Point. She says Hong Kong and Taiwan are also places with great Hello Kitty merchandise - even better than Japan!

Her collection includes usable Hello Kitty kitchenware and cutlery. She even got a striped awning and clear window panels installed to complete the illusion of a streetside café setting for the kitchen.

The drawer fronts in the kitchen were tailored to match the European-chic feel of the space.

The master bedroom exudes a dignified air with grand gestures like the round ceiling alcove above and bespoke furniture.

The feline's face is even moulded onto the customised headboard of the bed.

Hello Kitty bath products like liquid soap dispensers are all on show in the master bathroom.

Quench your thirst at the bar, which also displays Hello Kitty pencils on the counter.

Tucked away in the basement, this music room has customised display shelving to organise Connie's big collection.

 - See more at: AsiaOne

Hello Kitty fan spends $1.2m on dream hom

Hello Kitty fan spends $1.2m on dream hom

Are You Objective?

With a lot of people paying attention to my words, I have to ask this: can you be objective when it comes to mass opinions? Can you honestly say you are not a Hello Kitty hardcore fan, who hates what I am stating about what others think as well? If it really offends what the mass think, why do you care? Don't blame me for what a lot of the population think about the preferred "style." 

Here's an example of a comment:

"I think everyone who talks about internalized misogyny needs to take more care in not making assumptions and giving so much agency to those who don't respect certain individuals for their style choices and stuff, especially if you are not in dialogue with the specific individual we happen to be analyzing."    Aw, someone reads my blog!  >.<

Plain and simple, get over it. Everyone has different taste preferences and are always going to not "respect" a set of group's style preferences. This isn't just about the designs on Sanrio merchandise. It's on all aspects of genres like for an example: the type of music that you like to listen to. If you think about it logically, it's human to dismiss something that you don't like. We have the right to feel that way. Let's face it, everyone "disrespects" a dislike in one way or another. These groups can argue till their faces turn blue, but reality is reality. Learn to adapt to the real world or be trampled. Too harsh? I am the type that is not going to pull my punches or my words. Or maybe the author below has a point... maybe because I'm too outspoken and female? Is that why the hate is supposedly justified towards me? Like it or not, I am the type that likes to discuss topics that don't have a black and white answer. My blog articles reflect what I want to be: A voice to those who are silenced.

I am not sure I fully agree with the author, but to have an objective mind, you have to hear all sides of the argument before choosing what you believe-- whether it's your own safe bubble world or reality of the masses.

For me personally, I don't believe Kawaii was started to intentionally silence a woman's strong opinions, but "kawaii" is ingrained into Asia's culture of "women can be seen, but cannot be heard" kind of thinking that sometimes it might be difficult to separate the two issues at hand. The author brings up an interesting point as how in the Eastern culture, most of "them" would like girls to stay young and innocent for life. I can't fully dismiss that perspective, because I feel it resonates the truth to a degree.



You can read the full article below or here.

East Asian Kawaii Culture Is Insidiously Anti-Woman

By Ashley Yang

A few days ago, a friend sent me a text message of a picture of a “stereotypical Asian girl,” one with long bangs and big glasses, wearing a fuzzy brown hat with bear ears on top and holding a pink phone with a giant plastic Hello Kitty figurine on the back. The caption to the photo was a simple, “why do they all look like this?”
Initially, I was taken aback. I felt uncomfortable with the fact that my friend believed that all East Asians could be tossed together under a single category of “they.” I also didn’t think that the tacky getup of the girl from the photo was at all an accurate depiction of the way “all Asian girls” dressed, and I was offended by my friend’s insinuation that I should be associated with this particular kind of style (or lack of). I immediately moved to create a mental barrier with this idea and wrote off her message as an inanely insensitive comment.
As I rifled through my pencil case in my next class, its contents suddenly reminded me of the photo and more specifically, of her Hello Kitty phone case. Although I’ve never had an affinity for wearing animal-inspired hats or Hello Kitty paraphernalia, through my high school years I was known to frequent Sanrio and walk out with a small stash of pens and notepads that showed designs of similarly adorable characters, such as Chococat or Cinamonroll, the white dog with bunny-like flapping ears. I loved everything in that store, because it was like an Asian Disneyland. The entire atmosphere was cute and fanciful, the outrageous looking animal characters with exaggerated, personified features looked down at me with unfiltered joy from every wall. But little by little, I began to view that entire theme as juvenile and left it behind for more “age-appropriate” interests.
But evidently, there are Asian girls who stuck with Hello Kitty, girls to whom kawaii culture resonated, even as they went off to college and entered adulthood. When I asked myself why many Asian girls, especially those in Asia, choose to be kawaii indefinitely, I realized that maybe it wasn’t as much a choice as it was socialization - kawaii might just be one of the many creatively veiled stooges of patriarchal propaganda. This one was wrapped in shiny pink paper, topped off with a really, really big bow. 
In Japanese, “kawaii” means “cute” or “adorable.” This may seem innocuous upon a cursory view, until you realize that kawaii is centered around an idea of style that is innocent, adorable, and strikingly child-like. Actual children possess those qualities by nature, but the exaggerated features that kawaii girls assume in order to appear artificially “cute” are highly theatrical and when taken up on a daily basis, silly. Silly girls can’t be taken seriously in a world of adults, and especially not by adult men. Being kawaii only gives a world already riddled with misogyny more justification to condescend to women, to tell us that we aren’t capable, rational, and powerful people because we don’t take ourselves seriously enough to look like adults. Although the girl herself might not be thinking this far when she carries a Hello Kitty iPhone or puts in her circle lenses, she is actually infantalizing and disenfranchising herself from her right to be an independent, respected individual. 
Kawaii also implies that it is a superior model of beauty because it is mutually exclusive with “sexy” and “glamorous.” This might initially seem like a positive shift for gender politics because of objectification of young women is such a pervasive issue, but kawaii attempts to separate “cute” from sexy by demanding that young women conceal the sexual dimension of their persona that undeniably emerges as part of adulthood in the costume of a child. However, a woman dressed like a child still has the physiological features of an adult - namely breasts and wider hips - that when combined with their appearance can directly contribute to the sexualization of children. The kawaii look wasn’t intended to be sexy, but it’s definitely fetishized, the most flagrant scenario being the “sexy schoolgirl” pornographic motif. At worst, it looks like role play, with men in a paternalistic position of dominator and women submitting to his desires. 
The very core of being kawaii is an air of everlasting youth and innocence. In promoting the superficial markers of both, the kawaii movement fails to acknowledge its role in perpetuating a culture that exalts youth above all the other qualities a woman can have, namely maturity and experience (for evidence, look at the “leftover woman” phobia sweeping China). This depreciates women’s value in an irredeemable way as a form of social control - youth is something that you can never get back, but society can watch as women continue to try, poring (pun intended) over skincare regimens and mutilating themselves with facelifts while losing their money and self-worth along the way. As a whole picture, kawaii isn’t really about being a sweet, nice girl. It’s about doing everything you can to stunt your growth to make sure that you always remain a girl.

The World vs. Asia's Cute Culture

My Opinion:

"little understood in the West" sounds like a cop-out. An excuse to justify that a different culture might dislike or have a neutral opinion on something. I still think it's all about the design and how it matters to many people, especially those who do not live in Asia. It's not just IN America-- it's all over the globe like Australia and Europe! It's popular in Asia because the kawaii phenomenon is integrated into their beliefs and culture.

For the rest of the article, please click the link below. I've only highlighted the parts of the article that interest me.

Taiwan Today : Taiwan's Culture of Cute

Publication Date：09/29/2013
By Steve Hands

Cute things and phenomena are constantly in the news in Taiwan. The nation has recently witnessed the birth of a giant panda cub, the giant Rubber Duck by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman is floating in Kaohsiung City harbor and EVA Airways has just added a further Hello Kitty route to Los Angeles. Not to mention a steady release of cute mobile phones, tablets, laptops and just about any other consumer product imaginable.

The obsession with cute is a huge East Asian phenomenon, little understood in the West, and what many Westerners find most surprising is that not just young girls, but ostensibly sensible adults, are smitten with the bug and have large amounts of cash to drop on their hobby. The pink pound might be about gay purchasing power in the U.K., but in Japan the pink yen is mostly about Hello Kitty.

Caroline Favier, a Dutch toy collector whose extensive collection contains hundreds of curios from the region, might be expected to be readier than most to sympathize.

“Like most Westerners I don’t like cute,” Favier said in an online interview. “Actually, I like classic and tacky. I remember I couldn’t believe the first time I saw a 40-year old secretary’s Hello Kitty collection on her desk, and that was allowed in an office environment! It looked so unprofessional.”

But in Taiwan the young-at-heart like to buy cute things, irrespective of seniority. “My customers are of all ages, but mostly students, as this store is right by National Taiwan University,” Carolyn Lin, manager of a Non-no fashion accessories store in Taipei City’s Gongguan District, told Taiwan Today. “But we also get people in their 40s and adults bringing in their kids.”

Asked why people buy socks and apparel emblazoned with all manner of cartoon images, domestic and international, Lin seemed slightly dumbfounded, as if cuteness was so ubiquitous as to be beyond need of explanation. “They’re necessities. They just like the products because they’re fashionable.”

The phenomenon is so well-established that academics have taken an interest in cute mania, or ke’ai as it is known in Taiwan. What started in Japan with Hello Kitty has turned into a multibillion dollar global industry, which everyone from sociologists to psychiatrists is trying to understand.

“Ke’ai is a Chinese term that simply means loveable, and has a very long history,” Teri J. Silvio, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Ethnology in Taipei City-based Academia Sinica, told Taiwan Today in an email interview. Silvio has a huge collection of dolls, puppets and other figurines, as well as it being a serious research interest.

“The concept of lovability is probably universal. Anything that people feel positive about, in any way, can be ke’ai. In Taiwan today, ke’ai is often used to translate the Japanese term kawaii and the English cute. All of these terms have slightly different ranges of meaning.” 

Naturally, academic discourse has focused on the situation in Japan, where ke’ai culture began to take off in the 1970s. “There are many different explanations for why the kawaii aesthetic is so popular in Japan,” Silvio said. “Because kawaii products are most popular with young women, one explanation is that it reflects the sexist structure of Japanese culture, where women are expected to be weak and men to take care of them.”

However, Taiwan’s culture is far less sexist than Japan’s, so other arguments appear more pertinent to local conditions. “Others argue that the exaggeration of the kawaii style expresses dissatisfaction with the rigidity of adult gender roles,” Silvio added. “Many people in the popular culture industries argue that kawaii style is popular because it is comforting. Kawaii objects provide a kind of respite and healing from the competition and struggles of daily life in the contemporary world.”

The explosion in popularity of ke’ai also appears to have a demographic and material basis. Japan’s kawaii culture coincided with the huge increase in the number of young single women, often still living at home as real estate prices shot through the roof, but with large disposable incomes. Taiwan’s own demographic changes followed hot on Japan’s heels.

Continued here...

Singapore's McDonald's Fairy Tale 2013 Scandal

I stand by this: Manipulation and Manufactured Hype of Singapore's McDonald's Fairy Tale series plushes. In order for Hello Kitty fans to buy at a higher price, these "sellers" are doing whatever they can do to manipulate the hype that surrounds this "Fairy Tales" incident. If you think about it-- 10 years from now, the McDonald plushes won't be much of value because a lot of sellers will eventually realize that there are not a lot of collectors willing to shell out thousands of dollars for a toy. It's a lost cause. A hopeless gimmick. Poor them. Well, not really, but you get my point.

These sellers have tainted the word, "fan." Now, whenever a franchise company promotes a campaign with Sanrio, in the back of the minds of fans, they will ask: "Is that person ahead of me in line a true collector fan or a scalper who wants to profit from a fan's obsession?"

McDonald's urges public to stop profiteering from Hello Kitty plush toys

By Rachel Tan

The McDonald's Hello Kitty plush toy craze has translated into a opportunities for online sellers to capitalise on the fad.
Several advertisements selling the toy were seen just hours after they went on sale early Thursday morning. In one posting on eBay. there were 125 bids for the "Singing Bone" model.
News of the online transactions have reached McDonald's headquarters in Singapore - and the management is not happy about it. "We do not support people buying the Kitties for resale, and we have been regularly removing posts offering such services from our page. We take the conduct of our staff very seriously and if any of them are found to have misappropriated the Kitties for personal gain, we will not hesitate to take appropriate action," the fast-food chain posted on their official Facebook page.
The toy has also resulted in a number of confrontations among consumers. According to Stomp, at McDonald's Bukit Batok Central outlet, a policeman was asked to clear a dispute over people jumping queues.

Source: Straits Times

Hello Kitty: Asia vs. Mainstream Designs

Why does a majority of people see Hello Kitty as for children only?

This is a very fair question because even if there are a lot of Sanrio fans out there, there are even more larger groups of people, who are not into the "kawaii" fascination.

In order to view this objectively, I would probably think the answer lies in how Hello Kitty is presented. Design is the answer for this question. Hello Kitty was introduced in the right direction with quality designs, leading to it's popularity during the 90's, then it hit a brick wall. 

I believe Sanrio was at fault in how Hello Kitty's image was taken from a quality design to a more neutral, but plain look like above for the mainstream crowd. Maybe it was aimed to be a universal effect, but their designs backfired on them. I believe these kind of designs influenced adults to think only children would like it. In their reasoning, children/young teens are not mature enough to know better since the average adults would never like Hello Kitty for themselves. No matter how much die hard Hello Kitty fans protest, this is the majority of opinions for non-biased adult consumers. They're going to think HK adult fans are in a "phase" or that something is wrong with their taste preferences. 

In the beginning, I don't believe Sanrio would foresee that their character, Hello Kitty, would become such a big success worldwide. At first, they mainly targeted children, but they possibly never took account that those children would grow up and still be so fascinated with Sanrio's characters, especially Hello Kitty. 

"Design makes a difference..." 

Pic Source

Pic Source

Pic Source

A slight change to the color, shade, or alternation to a design can change an image dramatically. It can effect it's surroundings by the change of a mood in the room. Like above examples, particular designs can give off a mature or childish/young teen atmosphere that could contribute to a theme in a room. 

If you put a quality designed HK product, it attracts the eye. It's cute and pretty, therefore the concept of it being childish has disappeared. It's now "kawaii" to most adult fans, rather than dismissing HK fully as a kid's product brand. Below is an example of how design really matters and effects the average adult's opinions.

 Pic Source

Despite Sanrio being popular these days, the "plain universal" designs left a mark in most people's first impressions of Hello Kitty. Somehow, that can't be changed, but, Hello Kitty has bounced right back with better designs that have rekindled the love for HK with most adult fans.

International Seller Recommendation

I know how it's frustrating to find something online and not know how to get one yourself.

I've already got some inquiries about the lovely big plush, My Melody's *Pipi & Popo*

Here are the info:

I got the My Melody *Pipi & Popo* plush from e-bay. Specifically, I got it from this international Hong Kong e-bay seller, Lala6905. All you have to do is ask Lala6905 or you can ask one of your main Hong Kong/Japan international e-bay sellers to get it for you.
I can refer you to this one seller (who is very kind and helpful):
Her name is Yusuke
Her eBay ID is yusukeya.
She has a service of shopping agency.  This is her Web site: http://www.private-import-japan.com/
You can send an e-mail directly if there is an image or URL of the item that you want.  
EMAIL:  pp@private-import-japan.com

When there is stock in a manufacturer, she can get every kind of items you want.
For example, there are a lot of people who order an item off of Japan's official Sanrio shopping website:http://shop.sanrio.jp

Here's a direct link to the my melody *Pipi & Popo* Japan site: http://www.sanrio.co.jp/goods/200910/mm_myfavorites/mm_myfavorites.html
You can give her that direct link.

Or you can try:

KozyTomo

Japamart (Thanks to Arista from NY)

Just keep in mind, that these international sellers do charge a selling fee and the service doesn't come cheap. If you really want it, it's going to cost you. Tip: You can always ask for quotes from each and see which one you prefer.

UPDATE

To get items in Singapore, China, Malaysia or Taiwan, here is another shopping agent service that you can go to: Daigou.

Per SGE: "Active in Singapore and Malaysia, the service lets consumers buy from popular Chinese e-commerce portals like Taobao, M18, and DangDang. To supplement their main business, the site has their own e-commerce store and also daigou for Taiwanese goods. The business in its 2 years of existence has attained a modest following on Facebook with about 7,500 likes."

UPDATE #2
ISA Recommendation: Personal Shopper Japan. For more details, you can read it here.

Video of the Day:
This music below is addicting! I can't stop hitting the "replay" button.