This year’s Lantern Fantasy at the Chinese Garden in Singapore is extra-special for Sanrio fans, because it features Hello Kitty and friends!

Called "F8 - Hello Kitty Go Races!", lanterns are paraded about featuring Hello Kitty, Dear Daniel, Badtz Maru, Pom Pom Purin, My Melody, and other well-loved Sanrio characters participating in various sporting events. These include car racing, surfing, sailboat racing, and more.

The event started on 29 August 2008 up to 28 September, so if you have the chance, do catch it!

Here are some photos from the event, courtesy of eTour Singapore:

Hello Kitty has been named as ambassador for this year’s "Pink Ribbon Festival", an event for breast cancer. As such, a portion of the proceedings of the Hello Kitty line with the pink ribbon will go to the Japan Cancer Society’s "Smile Fund".

The pink ribbon is known globally as the logo for the early detection of breast cancer and serves as a symbol for enlightenment.

The Black Wonder castle is finally open! Enter Kuromi’s palace and save Hello Kitty and Dear Daniel from the naughty rabbit, and recover Kitty’s bow for her too!

A Sanriotown booth can also be found at the Black Wonder exhibit exit. Here, visitors can sign up for their free accounts. They also get to be part of a lucky draw, where they can get the chance to win the following prizes: a Hello Kitty digital camera, mouse set, and a limited-edition Hello Kitty Online shining passport. Visitors who leave their mobile numbers to the Sanriotown booth personnels can even get Hello Kitty mobile wallpapers once a week for the entire duration of Black Wonder.

The exhibit runs from today to August 3, 2008, so don’t miss it!

Taiwan’s Hello Kitty resort is now open to the public! Here are some pictures of what you can see in there:

Kudos to HelloMiMi for posting this!

Hi everyone! We’re about to say goodbye�to the month of�June, which pretty much means that time’s running out for anybody and everybody who wants to enter the HKO trailer competition. The response has been pretty good, and as was stated in the last post, we’ve seen some pretty good entries from people who’ve tested the game itself to people who wanted to (but weren’t able to, unfortunately).

Just because we’ve got a pretty good list of entries now doesn’t mean that it should stop you from sending in your own work though! You’ve still got some time, so get crackin’ on those videos and wow us all here at Sanriotown with your artistic prowess!

So remember: you’ve got up to midnight of June 30, 2008 (just a few days from now!)�to send in your entries. You have to use all of the elements found in the trailer pack provided, but everything else is pretty much up to you. Just make sure to come up with the best trailer you can imagine!

Technorati tags: hello kitty, hello kitty online, mmorpg, contest, dreamstudio