The Hello Kitty Craze
For those of you who don't know who is Hello Kitty, it is a Japanese cat character which has been very famous all over Asia for the past 20 years. As I am writing those lines, I just know it will be here for another 20 years at least.
In Singapore. this little Kitty is a big star and it is very common for big shopping malls to have at least one Hello Kitty shop where you can buy everything "Hello Kitty": Soft toys of course, but also pens, T-shirts, bed sheets, bags, wallets, pillows, cups, key chains, everything exists with Hello Kitty. You would think that only kids play with it, but how wrong you would be !!! Everybody loves it. You can even see old ladies with Hello Kitty stuff.
Some pictures of Hello Kitty:
In January 2000, McDonalds in Singapore had a great idea to sell as a special offer a Hello Kitty doll with every value meal purchased for only S$5. Two dolls actually represented a married couple and they come in traditional costumes of 6 different countries. Each set lasted for only one week and in order to get a set (2 dolls: male and female) you needed to buy 2 value meals. Would you believe it, this offer was a total success, too much in fact. Even McDonalds could not predict such a success. On the first week (those were special futurist costumes for the new millenium), people queued for 2 to 3 hours and you could see some peolpe buying up to 20 sets (40 dolls and value meals !!!).
After this, people started realizing that everybody loved those toys and that they would have to queue earlier and earlier. Week after week, the queues got longer and longer. McDonalds had to change its policy and one person could only buy two sets (which is still four meals). Last week was the Japanese set. To many people, it was the cutest set (to Yvonne too) and she wanted only this one. We realized that if we really wanted to have it, we would have to queue OVERNIGHT !!! We went at McDonalds at midnight. How surprised we were when we saw that more than 700 people were already there. Some had started queuing at 6pm the same day !!!
This was so incredible !!! Some people brought cards, tents, chairs, everything to make themselves comfortable during the wait. I did not think anything on earth would make me give up my sleep and I certainly wouldn't have expected the first time to be for some Hello Kitty soft toys. But Yvonne really wanted them... So well, you know how it goes when your dear beloved girlfriend asked you a big big favor :) .
Anyway, we queued all night long. At 4:30 am Mcdonalds' employee came out to distribute tickets. This was to ensure that all the people who actually queued would get their lot and to inform the ones without tickets that they could go home already. We heard that only 1000 tickets would be given out so at this time we feared that we would have queued for nothing. Fortunately, Yvonne and I got the tickets number 754 and 755. By 5:30 am all the tickets were given out and the sign "sold out" was shown at the entrance of the McDonalds. It was not even opened yet !!!
The outlet opened at 7 am. When the first guy walked out jubilantly with his Hello Kittys, everybody clapped for this chap who have probably queued since 4pm. In one hour time, only slightly more than 100 people had been served. This just told us that we would need to queue for another 7 hours before our turn would come. I am working here. I could not skip my work. Yvonne however had already taken half a day off. We did not know what to do. Don't you think it would have been such a waste to have queued for 7 hours already and don't get our lot ? Luckily an old lady came around 7:30 am. I think she did not expect so many people to be there. She wanted to get one set for her daughter who is in London but had heard about the news and called home to ask her mother to buy for her. But of course by this time all the tickets had already been given out. Somehow, we ended up talking to each other and we arranged that she would collect 2 sets on my behalf and I would give her one for free. So that's what we did and it worked perfectly. I did not have to skip work. Can you imagine such a lousy excuse: "Sorry boss, I cannot make it, I am queuing for the Hello Kitty". In the end I got my set that I will bring back to France to show the people there why I queued for one night. I must admit I can hear them laughing already :)
To help you understand how bad the situation is, try to imagine that some people queued just to get the Kittys and sell them after that at high prices on some kind of black market. The price for one Kitty could rise up to $100, which makes the pair at $200 (800 Francs). This is amazing.
On the next day after this Japanese set, I read in the newspaper that several fights had occured at several McDonalds outlets when some people tried to jump queues. A couple of girls and women who could not handle the overnight queuing fainted. and one of them was even taken to the hospital.
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