Singapore residents who are fans of Sanrio and HKO, be sure to grab today’s My Paper! the MMORPG has just been featured today there, which is one of the leading publications in the country and is known to cover “world news, business, sports, lifestyle, and entertainment in two languages within a single newspaper”.Aside from talking about HKO, the article features the impact of the MMORPG on Singapore (the game will be opening for the region come next month), and how the people there are anticipating the game. SanrioTown and HKO’s very own Starrfire7 is even featured in the article, so hats off to you, Starrfire7!

Aside from the newspaper, HKO has also been featured on the websiteToysREvil! Be sure to check it out by clicking here.

Sanrio Global Consumer Products is pleased to announce the arrival of several new iPhone/iPod touch applications featuring pop icon Hello Kitty®. The applications were created in conjunction with Sanrio Co, Ltd. (Tokyo), Sanrio Digital (Hong Kong) and in partnership with AITIA Corporation (Tokyo). Select products are available now through Apple’s iTunes App Store and the agreements are effective immediately.“Hello Kitty entering into the iPhone/iPod touch space connects our consumer to the fast-paced, on-the-go world of today,” says Janet Hsu, President of Sanrio Global Consumer Products. “We are thrilled to offer our tech-savvy fans fun and relevant ways to personalize their iPhone and iPods with interactive content and accessories. We are confident that our global partners, with their understanding of the Hello Kitty brand, will together offer a complete mobile experience.”In celebration of Hello Kitty’s 35th Anniversary this year, Aitia Corporation has developed a series of iPhone/iPod touch applications that launched in 77 countries last week, including the U.S. & Japan. iHelloKitty Tokyo is inspired by the cultures of Tokyo and offers users the chance to dress Hello Kitty in street fashion items from various locations in Tokyo (Harajuku’s Gothic Lolita and Akihabara’s Maid). Hello Kitty Camera uses a unique facial recognition feature to automatically create fun and customized photos featuring supercute Hello Kitty designs. Hello Kitty 35th Anniversary allows fans to join in the celebration of her anniversary with a special screening of the Hello Kitty Colors video (the theme of this anniversary), an anniversary countdown clock and a Hello Kitty design museum – plus it provides the user with instant news & updates on Hello Kitty’s anniversary. Hello Kitty 35th Anniversary is free to users for download; the other applications retail for $2.99 and are available now at Apple’s iTunes App Store.

Sanrio Digital will be introducing the first iPhone game application based on the Hello Kitty and other SANRIO characters. The game will include an interactive application combined with a fun and exciting video game. Players can score points, collect special items, and create wallpapers featuring Hello Kitty and other popular SANRIO characters like Badtz-Maru®, Keroppi®, and Pochacco®. This game will be the first of many game apps planned by Sanrio Digital and will be available for download on Apple’s iTunes App Store this summer.

In related news, Sanrio Global Consumer Products has signed a new licensing agreement with Power Support USA, to produce a collection of Hello Kitty hard cases for the iPhone and iPod. The hard cases feature signature Hello Kitty graphics and are designed for use on the iPhone 3G as well as the iPod touch 2G and the iPod nano 4G. Prices range from $29.95 to $39.95 for the cases which will be available in July 2009 at the Apple online store and www.powersupportusa.com.

# # #

About SANRIO

SANRIO’s signature brand Hello Kitty celebrates 35 years of fun & friendship in 2009. With fans around the world, Hello Kitty will mark the year with special co-branded partnerships, unique products, retail promotions & year-end exhibition events. SANRIO develops, distributes and licenses a collection of gift, stationery and fashion accessory items for women of all ages. SANRIO was founded in 1960 based on the concept that a small gift can bring a big smile to a child of any age. Today, over 50,000 SANRIO-branded items are sold in over 70 countries around the world. In the Western Hemisphere SANRIO character-branded products are sold in upwards of 12,000 locations including department, specialty, national chain stores and over 85 SANRIO boutiques. For more information, please visit www.sanrio.com.

About Sanrio Digital

Sanrio Digital is a joint venture between Typhoon Games (HK) Ltd. and Sanrio Wave Hong Kong Co., Ltd. Sanrio Digital is responsible for the expansion of Sanrio intellectual property assets into various digital and online media, leveraging an extensive library of original material that includes world-famous brands such as Hello Kitty, Badtz-Maru, My Melody and others. For more information please visit www.sanriodigital.com.

About AITIA Corporation

AITIA Corporation, founded in 2006 is a leading CrossMedia communications company that provides interactive advertising system solutions and entertainment contents softwares. (Headquarters: Tokyo, Japan; President: Hiroko Mugibayashi). AITIA specialize in the integration of media art, design, information technology, and communications. AITIA is at the forefront of the digital media revolution with flagship interactive solutions. For more information, please visit http://www.aitia.co.jp.

About Power Support USA

Power Support is a global leader in iPhone/iPod/Mac accessories. With its products selling around the world, Power Support is known for its original designs, superior quality, and advanced manufacturing techniques for the entirety of its product line. Power Support (USA), Inc. can trace its roots back to 1994 when Ryoichi Mase started Power Support Ltd. in Tokyo, Japan. In 2004, Keiko Mase Napier, brought the company to the United States and opened offices in Burbank, California. Since the release of the Crystal and Anti-Glare film sets, Power Support has grown to become a protective staple for today’s portable electronic devices. The company strives to ensure great quality, customer satisfaction, and innovative protection technologies. For more information, please visit: www.PowerSupportUSA.com

* iPhone and iPod touch are trademarks or registered trademarks of Apple Inc, US.

For those who don’t know, a lot of great and new things are going on in the development of Hello Kitty Online (HKO). Aside from the storylines quests and maps that are being created for the players, new avatars, mini-games and more are also being churned out to bring a whole new level of fun to the game!

Click here to see what these improvements are.

Hello SanrioTown members! Today is the start of the Scrapbook Contest’s BATCH TWO! Here’s batch two’s video. Identify which characters are they by the clues given on each slide. After identifying them all, write your answers using your SanrioTown email (following the example we made in submitting entries) then send it to sanriotown_event@hellokitty.com. Good luck everyone!

(Batch 2 entries will be accepted until May 31.)

Three winners will be drawn for this batch and the prizes will be:
A Limited Edition Hello Kitty 1GB Memory Stick!

E-MAIL ENTRY EXAMPLE

From: kayleecheung@mymelody.com
To: sanriotown_event@hellokitty.com
Subject: HELLO KITTY’S SCRAPBOOK CONTEST BATCH TWO

slide 1 - Hello Kitty
slide 2 – Pochacco
slide 3 - My Melody
slide 4 - Little Twin Stars
slide 5 - We Are Dinosaurs
slide 6 - Dokidoki Yummychums
slide 7 – Cinamoroll
slide 8 – Mimmy
slide 9 – Pandaba
slide 10 - Minna no Tabo

Hello SanrioTown members! Today is the start of the Scrapbook Contest! Did everyone familiarize themselves already with all the characters Sanrio created? Here’s the video for batch one. Identify which characters are they by the clues given on each slide. After identifying them all, write your answers using your SanrioTown email (following the example we made in submitting entries) then send it to sanriotown_event@hellokitty.com. Good luck everyone!

(Batch 1 entries will be accepted until May 24. Batch 2 will begin on May 25 2009, 11:59 P.M. EST.)

Three winners will be drawn for each batch and the prizes include:
Limited Edition Hello Kitty Shirt and Bag

Limited Edition Hello Kitty 1GB Memory Stick

E-MAIL ENTRY EXAMPLE

From: kayleecheung@mymelody.com
To: sanriotown_event@hellokitty.com
Subject: HELLO KITTY’S SCRAPBOOK CONTEST BATCH ONE

slide 1 - Hello Kitty
slide 2 – Pochacco
slide 3 - My Melody
slide 4 - Little Twin Stars
slide 5 - We Are Dinosaurs
slide 6 - Dokidoki Yummychums
slide 7 – Cinamoroll
slide 8 – Mimmy
slide 9 – Pandaba
slide 10 - Minna no Tabo

(note: For batch 2, please change the word “BATCH ONE” to “BATCH TWO”)

Check out the latest game of SanrioTown!

Adorable hamster CoroCoroKuririn has gotten himself a load of treasures, but he needs your help in stashing them! Open the right hole where each item should go into by clicking the lid or typing the appropriate number on to your keypad. Make sure you cover the holes after the item falls into it, or you might end up stashing the wrong item! More and more hamsters will roll with their loot as time progresses, so be sure to have your wits about you when you play the game!

Hello Kitty Online is now officially launched in Indonesia!

A press conference was held last week, 22 April 2009, in XXI Sarinah to officially launch arguably one of the biggest MMORPGs to date in Indonesia. There, Sanrio Digital and GOGAME, a game publishing company based in Jakarta, Indonesia, signed a symbolic cooperative agreement, making their partnership official, as well as making GOGAME the official publisher of HKO in Indonesia.

Among the changes made by GOGAME to HKO are the following: the Housing system, wherein players can build their own house that they can access through the Farm Manager in London; an advanced farming system that already has an irrigation feature so that players won’t have to worry about asking help from their friends to water the crops; and the consumable loyalty points that they can get via using the services of SanrioTown. Mr. Teguh Sanjaya, GOGAME’s Marketing Director, has stated that  players should expect that in-game events would be focused on cooperating and working with other players, such as building houses together.

Patrick Setiawan, Chief Executive Officer of GOGAME, described HKO as “an online game product that is closely linked to a community portal, which also use a well known brand like Sanrio are the first of its kind in the world,” stating that Indonesia is the first country in the world that was able to launch a publisher-operated version of HKO.

The press conference was also the chance for the invited press people to have fun, as they were able to have a friendly competition with each other through the Sanrio mini-games, with the winners being awarded prizes for their efforts.

Congratulations and welcome to the SanrioTown family, GOGAME!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the contest!

Hello Kitty and her friends have finally caught the culprit! The “Mysterious Egg Thief” who stole Hello Kitty’s Easter Eggs is none other than…

Aww…Minna No Tabo didn’t mean any harm! He just wanted to have a little twist with this year’s Easter Egg Hunt! After being revealed as the Mysterious Egg Thief, he explained to everyone that it was actually his and Dear Daniel’s idea to make their Easter Egg Hunt a little bit different! Instead of hunting for eggs, why not hunt for the entire basket of eggs by searching for the one who stole it? Everyone then realized that they have been playing Easter Egg Hunt all along! After the hunt is over, everyone ate their share of the cute and colorfully-designed eggs.  Here’s an egg for you Egg Hunter! Congratulations! You solved who the Mysterious Egg Thief is!

Here are the answers to all the clues and puzzles:

DAY 1

Riddle Answer: Fire (http://blog.sanriotown.com/fire-2009:hellokitty.com)
Subpuzzle Answer: The pig in the middle
Keyletter: T

DAY 2

Riddle Answer: Beauty thread in the Forums (http://forumus.sanriotown.com/scripts/mb2/mb2.cgi?rm=show_topic&period=0&topic_id=39112)
Subpuzzle Answer: (Given)
Keyletter: A

DAY 3

Riddle Answer: http://blog.hellokitty.com/3danimation
Subpuzzle Answer: Shinkansen
Keyletter: N

DAY 4

Riddle Answer: http://blog.sanriotown.com/hellokitty_news:hellokitty.com
Subpuzzle Answer: Seven
Keyletter: N
Explanation: The question was “How many candles remain?” not “How many lit candles remain?”

DAY 5

Riddle Answer: http://video.sanriotown.com/video/5cf951550f4e0e0f
Subpuzzle Answer: KITTY
Keyletter: I

DAY 6

Riddle Answer: http://blog.hellokitty.com/welcometojapan
Subpuzzle Answer: One
Keyletter: N

DAY 7

Riddle Answer: Stamp (http://blog.sanriotown.com/stamp:kuririnmail.com)
Subpuzzle Answer: JUSTONEWORD
Keyletter: O

DAY 8

Riddle Answer: Dream shirt thread (http://forumus.sanriotown.com/scripts/mb2/mb2.cgi?rm=show_topic&period=0&topic_id=39175)
Subpuzzle Answer: A
Keyletter: A

Day 9

Riddle Answer: http://video.sanriotown.com/video/bd97b0516ffaa37a
Subpuzzle Answer: Hong Kong
Keyletter: B

DAY 10
Riddle Answer: Telephone (http://blog.sanriotown.com/telephone:mymelody.com)
Subpuzzle Answer: My Melody
Keyletter: M
Explanation: My Melody’s excuse doesn’t affect the alibi of Badtz and Cinamoroll.  So if only one is lying, it can only be My Melody.  The truth is, My Melody and Badtz ate it!

DAY 11
Riddle Answer: http://blog.sanriotown.com/blog_allstars:hellokitty.com/
Subpuzzle Answer: Pochacco
Keyletter: O
Explanation: Pochacco stole it because he knew that the sword was “old and reddish” even if it was still covered in “expensive silk fabrics.”

Did you get them all correctly? Winners of the contest will be announced in the SanrioTown main blog on April 17 so stay tuned!

Hi everyone! Just a reminder to all the Easter egg hunt participants: we’ll still be accepting your answers to the questions until 14 April 2009, 11:59 P.M. EST. We’ll be having a lucky draw for players too, so make sure you send us your e-mail to get the chance at winning great prizes!

Contest winners will be announced by 17 April 2009, so stay tuned for this!

From all of us here on SanrioTown to all of you, we’d like to wish all of you a very happy Easter!

Make sure to greet all of your loved ones a happy Easter by sending them adorable e-cards available exclusively on SanrioTown.com!