Hello Kitty is getting a running start ahead of the Beijing Olympics, expanding her kingdom of cute with a new panda costume.

Ahead of next year’s Summer Games, Japan’s iconic cat will merge with China’s most popular animal in a new design depicting Hello Kitty in a panda-like black and white outfit.

“The Olympics are coming up. That is what we have in mind,” said Kazuo Tomatsu, a spokesman for Hello Kitty maker Sanrio Co.

The company has yet to unveil the exact products for the Olympic tie-in.

Hello Kitty, which is popular among girls and adult women alike, is also adding a new product line showing different sides of the cat — as a little devil and an angel.

The black devil character features Hello Kitty with tiny horns and a tail, while the white angel sports a pair of wings.

Along with stuffed figures, the devil and angel characters will be used for perfumes, lingerie and accessories, among other products.

Reports in Henan have found evidence that child kidnappings happen to provide free child slave labour for kiln brick factories in Henan province, desperate parents who’se children have been Kidnapped have unearthed this and police have been investigating this case.

Despite the massive modernization in China the size of China makes it also difficult to control what happens as part of this modernization and rush for material greed and this is just one such example, similar to the kidnappings of City girls to become forced Wives of male farmers in rural China who, because of the 1 child policy, have no choice as the women leave the farms and the next generation is all men and boys (and spoilt as well, as they are the only (grand) child in a family of 12.

A Shenzen business man paid 400,000 Yuan (that’s about 50,000 USD) for 499 grams of authentic Yunnan Pu Ehr Tea, giving rise to something that has yet to be seen since the Tulip bubble, except that Tea lasts a lot longer (but it is still ridiculous). In a province like Yunnan that is an enormous amount given that annual pay could be something like only several thousand Yuan, particularly farmers in the country side.

The Tea bubble speculation however is only felt inside China, causing Western buyers to not drink to buy this sort of tea because it’s, unsurprisingly, more expensive than a 1982 Chateaux Margeaux or whatever other expensive Wine that exists (that’s assuming you pour hot water onto the Tea and serve it, litre by litre it’s probably more expensive still!). I also doubt whether Pu Ehr tea will appreciate in value, as Tea will rot eventually and perish just like normal food items.

This is quite a dangerous development as it could hurt an overal Tea industry which would be focused more on speculation than the drinking of it, there is nothing wrong with expensive Tea but this is crazy!

I read this on the SCMP a few days ago, the article title was:

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Something new and different….did someone check to see if the foam is in pink? Is this one for the Hello Kitty plane? Who’d buy a fire extinguisher…

These are not images from the actual Movie, so either cel art or other art that I found on the internet to share with everyone!

This last image is actually very interesting, it wasn’t in the Movie but looked like it could have been….

A new product, although nothing unusual, it’s Kitty Cute.

Picked this one up at Deviant Art, it’s Porco, still in Pig form going for a go at being a car racer (as supposed to a pilot). Nice idea, neat concept and beautifully designed.

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It’s nice to see so many people from all over the World to come and read my blog! Please leave a comment or a note, I’ll be glad to return the favour!

Just browsing the web, and thought of sharing them, as fans of Miyazaki and his works, this one is of Laputa, the castle in the sky.

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s cutest cat in glittering crystal decorates NEC Corp.’s new pink laptop in the Japanese electronics maker’s latest effort to woo working women.

The La Vie G HelloKitty model, available for $1,650 by Internet order only in Japan, went on sale Wednesday, and has gotten off to a good start, company spokesman Shinya Hashizume said Thursday, while declining to give numbers.

”PC users now tend to be men, but we’re hoping to attract women with this product,” he said.

The laptop, developed in collaboration with Sanrio Co., the Tokyo-based company behind HelloKitty, uses 299 Swarovski crystals to depict four hearts and the bubbly feline head wearing a pink bow and crown.

NEC is hoping to sell several hundred of the HelloKitty laptops in the next few months, targeting the summertime when Japanese workers receive their twice-a-year bonuses, Hashizume said.

The laptop, which comes with a Windows Vista operating system, 100 gigabyte hard disk drive and 1 gigabyte memory, is being advertised as a laptop that’s ”dazzling and gorgeous like a jewelry box.”

HelloKitty has been popular for years with children and young women, but the cat has begun to appear on electronic gadgets, guitars and expensive jewelry.

There’s even a HelloKitty Barbie, who wears a belt, necklace and jacket with the image of the celebrity mouthless cat.