Alt.fan.hello-kitty (often abbreviated afhk) is a friendly little newsgroup devoted to appreciating and sharing the cuteness of Hello Kitty and her fellow Sanrio characters. Conversation in this group is often oriented towards locating and buying Sanrio merchandise, but any friendly Sanrio-related posts are welcome. Although almost all Sanrio products are originally intended for children, there are many adults on this group -- don't be ashamed to love Sanrio just because you're physically a grown-up!
1b) What is Hello Kitty?
The Sanrio bio for Hello Kitty says:
"Hello Kitty was born in London, England where she lives with her twin sister, Mimi. Both Hello Kitty and Mimi are in the third grade. They have many friends at school and, together, they share many adventures. When school's out, Hello Kitty travels the world making friends. Her generosity and kindness endear her to everyone she meets. Her hobbies include music, reading, eating the cookies her sister makes, and best of all, making new friends. "After all, she says, 'You can never make too many friends.'"
Hello Kitty is a cute little cat with an extremely large head, usually pictured with her sister or her teddy bears, and usually dressed in a cute little red romper, although she often is seen in other outfits during the course of her many adventures. She usually does not have a mouth, although in video appearances she does. She was first brought into the world by Sanrio Co. in 1974, and made her international debut two years later. Her birthday is November 1st.
1c) What is Sanrio?
Sanrio is the company, based in Japan, responsible for Hello Kitty and all of her cute compatriots. All of Sanrio's creations are pure marketing, intended to sell the pens, pencils, tins, lunch boxes, clothing, stickers, and myriad other products upon which they appear.
1d) Commonly Used Abbreviations
HK = Hello Kitty
LTS = Little Twin Stars
SD = Spottie Dottie
Sanrio has created well over 100 characters, including sidekicks, in their 20+ year history. While Hello Kitty is the primary character, there are several other "mainline characters" in the Sanrio Smiles line. These are Keroppi, a frog; Pochacco, a dog; Pekkle, a duck; Spottie Dottie, a dalmatian; and Bad Badtz Maru, a penguin.
Tishakitty has the most comprehensive list of characters known to the newsgroup at her website: http://members.aol.com/TishaKitty/index.html
New characters are added every year, while others are de-emphasized, which leads to...
2b) What happened to __________?
This question is a source of some mystery and contention. In late 1998, rumors abounded from various store clerks that Sanrio was going to discontinue a number of characters. This prompted a response from the Sanrio US headquarters that Sanrio does now discontinue any characters, but will stop producing merchandise for them for periods of time. Some examples of this are My Melody, a rabbit; Little Twin Stars, 2 angels; and Tuxedo Sam, a penguin. These characters disappeared for most of the 1990's before being revived in 1998.
Sanrio also engages in "testing" new characters for response. Some of these do not pass the test and their merchandise pretty much disappears from stores. Some new characters that were tested in 1998 were Pink No Corisu, a squirrel and Coro Coro Kuririn, a hamster. Not all test characters disappear. For example, Chococat, a brown male cat, is having a big line of merchandise made in 1999 after 2 successful test runs.
2c) What is the name of this bear?
There's no certain answer to this question. Sanrio has made a number of different teddy bear characters, many of which aren't officially named. Holly's Bear and Mr. Bear's Dream are two that are, and any merchandise of these have the name attached to them. If there's no name with the bear, chances are good it's just an anonymous Sanrio bear.
Go to this page: http://www.sanrio.com/Main/main.html
In addition to these lists, a nunber of chain stores might have Sanrio products. Claire's, an accessory shop in many malls, has had Sanrio socks and makeup for sale. Sears and Montgomery Wards have both sold various Sanrio clothing, including women's underwear and pajamas.
Some other good places to check, if you have access, are Asian grocery stores or gift shops. If you have a "Chinatown" or "Little Tokyo" near you, many of the stores there may have Sanrio and bootlegs.
Sanrio Surprises is the name of the officially franchised or corporate-owned Sanrio Stores.
Sanrio Gift Gate is an older name for Sanrio Surprises.
Sanrio Smiles is the name of the "mainstream" line of Sanrio products. Sanrio products sold in department stores like Sears and Montgomery Wards carry the "Sanrio Smiles" tag. Only a few of the most popular characters are in the Sanrio Smiles line.
3c) Canada
3d) The rest of the world
Well, if you live in Japan or Taiwan or Hong Kong, you can't help but trip over Sanrio merchandise whenever you walk out the door. SOME HELP WITH EUROPE WOULD BE NICE HERE. ANYONE? (e-mail the author if you have any information)
(I need input from customers that have dealt with these people to see if they're straight shooters. If there's others you have bought from that are better than these sellers, please e-mail me and let me know. - John)
If you are in the United States, The Club Sanrio area of the Sanrio Website (http://www.sanrio.com/Main/main.html) often has some "club exclusive" products for sale, as well as catalog closeouts. You can also join Club Sanrio at this site, which includes having a small catalog sent to your house.
According to Jenny Loh, Sanrio will not officially license Internet-based sales of Sanrio products. But there are some websites that do mail-order Sanrio sales, especially of items not available in the United States. Expect to pay a small surcharge plus shipping prices.
Some people also suggest buying Sanrio products from E-bay or other auction websites. The 2 subsections that follow relate to this.
3eii) What is E-bay?
E-bay (http://www.ebay.com) is a Website that handles online auctioning of products. For a small fee, a user can put items up for auction. Registering as a bidder is free of charge. The E-bay site has more detail on the buying and selling process. Using the E-bay search engine, you can type in "Sanrio" or "Hello Kitty" or any character name and find out if any auctions are going on. Generally, there are around 100 Sanrio-related auctions running, varying from old items to Asian exclusives to currently shipping items. Descriptions and pictures are usually posted as well.
There is a strong disagreement among the posters of alt.fan.hello-kitty as to the selling of Sanrio products on E-bay. Many posters are against "scalping" and use E-bay only to find older items and to look at pictures. They suggest that when you find something for sale on E-bay, that you check with the newsgroup to find out if the item is readily available elsewhere and what the cost is.
3eiii)What is "scalping"?
Simply defined, scalping is the selling of currently available merchandise at an inflated price. For example, the Hello Kitty beanies are priced at $5.25 but are commonly sold for twice that on E-bay to people that can't locate them in their area for whatever reason. This behavior is highly frowned upon by a number of posters on afhk, although others on the group engage in this practice. Again, everyone is free to do as they wish, but the newsgroup exists as a source of information and contacts to assist you.
One way to use the newsgroup is as a marketplace to buy, sell and trade Sanrio. While this is not the primary purpose of the newsgroup, it certainly is an enjoyable aspect. If you are trying to find some items, post a want list and someone might offer to pick them up for you. Usually, this would be done at cost and shipping. Likewise, if you can find something someone else is looking for, e-mail them and help them out! Some folks prefer to trade and will post trade lists of items they have and items they are looking for. If you have some items you want to get rid of, this is a great way to do it and get something in return.
3ei) What are some websites that sell Sanrio?
3f) Newsgroup marketplace
Sanrio Co. is pretty protective of their copyrighted characters, as are the people who scan and create pictures and maintain websites. Using these pictures for profit, or downloading them and distributing them without permission is a violation of copyright laws and just not nice. Claiming others' images as your own is also a violation of copyright laws and a violation of most service provider's Terms of Service. If you use Sanrio images on your website, it is recommended that you put "Copyright Sanrio" on all images and add a note that downloading the pictures is a copyright violation.
Multimedia is a term that relates to movie, music and desktop function applications for computers. Some examples of multimedia files include MPEGs (movies), GIFs (images), WAVs (sound files) and EXEs (applications). Multimedia applications also include Screen Savers, Desktop Patterns, Themes and/or Wallpapers, Fonts and Cursors.
3 important notes for downloading any multimedia files:
4bii) What are some sites for multimedia files?
(NOTE: THE AUTHOR OF THIS FAQ HAS NOT CHECKED OUT ANY OF THESE SITES, AS THEY ARE INTENDED FOR PC USERS AND HE IS A MAC USER. THE KEEPER OF THE FAQ DOES NOT GUARANTEE THESE SITES TO BE VIRUS-FREE AND WOULD APPRECIATE ANY RECOMMENDATIONS OR WARNINGS ABOUT THESE SITES.)
4biii)Can someone post the files to this newsgroup?
NO!!!!! Alt.fan.hello-kitty is a non-binary newsgroup, and the posting of binaries is not allowed, not welcome and a violation of your Terms of Service. Binaries are large memory files and may cause other posts to be "bumped" by smaller service providers. They also may cost some users money to download a file they can't use nor care about.
There are several options if you have something you want to share with other Sanrio fans. One is to post the file on the newsgroup alt.binaries.misc and post a message on afhk directing people to the file. You can also post a description of the file and offer to e-mail it to interested users. Or, you can go to www.geocities.com and get a free web page to post your files on.
This information is good for both new users to be aware of and regular users to re-familiarize themselves with. Netiquette is not generally required, but is appreciated by most posters and you'll find that ignoring netiquette on afhk will get you ingored.
In addition, here's some reminders that will make reading Usenet less stressful and more informative and fun. The following tips can be found at: http://www.netannounce.org/news.announce.newusers/archive/usenet/primer/part1
Occassionally, afhk will get spammed or trolled. Spamming is when multiple posts are made to a variety of newsgroups, usually an advertisement and never on-topic. Trolling is when someone makes an inflammatory post, frequently to several groups at one time, trying to get heated responses. In either case, please do not post a response, or respond to any responses. This only adds to the waste. E-mail the user's provider (the address is generally abuse@) with a complaint.
Thanks to Colleen Morgan, Mara, Tasha, Olgi Hernandez, Tishakitty, Sarah Gilbert, Jim McLennan, Joyce Tan, Mark Baartse, Sleepy and Sofia for providing information for this faq.