The Rest of Your Life (v3.0)

Listening To: Electroluv : Mr.Gelatine (Magnatune)

Current Horn Factor :

Quote of The Day
CMadz I have myspace so I can keep in touch with certain friends …
f8kt1tZ nigga, you need 2get yo’self some new friends !

Thanks to the magic of Sanrio Corp & Fender U.S.A, I know what I want for Xmas !!! Forget your Kirk Hammet signature edition B.C Rich Walocks, your Joe Satriani custom Ibanez Strats, even your increasingly rare Saul Hudson (Slash) signature edition Gibson Les Pauls. Walking past Bondi Inter-Music (normally a shop for serious musicians), I saw one of these babies in the window, and knew a new legend in high-demand collector guitars had been born. Mark my words people … in five or ten years time, these things are going to be worth an absolute MINT !!! ;-) 

It kills me Just to clarify, this isn’t some cheap ‘novelty’ guitar either – it’s a fully working, ‘proper’ stratocaster from Fender (Squire), albeit in a “smaller size for younger players”. Now I know the guys at Sanrio have been trying to expand the (evil) Hello Kitty empire of late. We actually have a Hello Kitty toasted sandwich maker at home (for sheer kitsch value), and have been also tempted to buy the Hello Kitty alarm clock & television, among other things. A Hello Kitty Strat though ? That’s just …. tres bizzarro !

Was the product manager at Fender smoking crack when he agreed to this unholy partnership ? For that matter, was the purchasing guy at Inter-Music smoking a similar bag of crack when they decided (a) to not only carry these things, but (b) to give them pride of place in the display window displacing various Roland Grooveboxes & Korg Electribes ? I know it’s coming up to Christmas, but honestly these things should be sitting in a dusty corner of the store somewhere, not taking up valuable display space near the front door, where they’re likely to cause injury to serious musicians who see them and double over in paroxysms of laughter ?

 

To be honest, I’m not even sure if these things are targetted at boys or girls. I mean the pink colour, and the Hello Kitty motif would make you think it’s aimed squarly at girls. But then if you look at the kid on the packaging, it could conceivably be a pre-pubescent Hanson-esque looking boy. Granted, you can’t see all that in too much detail on the box shot above, but just trust me on this one.

You’d think it would all end there gang, but it doesn’t ! I noticed something else looking at the box-shots just now, which I missed when I was photographing it with my phone in the window. There’s actually a website – www.fenderhellokitty.com 

From looking at said site, it would seem the version of the Hello Kitty Strat we have here in the Asia-Pacific region is actually a bit watered down, in terms of its Kitty branding. The American version of the strat appears to have a HUGE facsmilie of Kitty’s noggin taking up most of the body of the guitar, whereas the one I saw in the shop only has the smaller logo (as found on our toastie maker). Oh … and yes gang … from the website I’ve also discovered there’s a companion Badtz-Maru bass guitar as well - perfect for those wanting more low-end out of their Sanrio-powered sound.

Rrrrrrrawk on, boys and girls