SD 0

Hello Kitty’s parent company launches Twitter account for group of five beautiful boys who love Sanrio characters (and their merchandise).

While Sanrio gets plenty of credit for its design skills, crafting adorable character after adorable character, the company’s marketing team is just as impressive as its artists. After all, Sanrio essentially invented the concept of “character goods,” merchandise for characters that exist only to promote merchandise.

Now, Sanrio is adding another layer to the marketing mix, with the introduction of the Sanrio Boys.

And who are the Sanrio Boys (known as the Sanrio Danshi in Japanese)? Well, they’re a group of five handsome high school students. Each one of them has their own favorite Sanrio character, and…

…well, that’s about it.

There’s Kota Hasegawa, who’s fond of the latest Sanrio character popularity poll winner, Pom Pom Purin.

Yu Mizuno, smitten enough with My Melody that he sports a barrette that’s the same pink color as the hood the Sanrio bunny rabbit wears.

▼ He even sends fan mail, apparently.

Shunsuke Yoshino respects Hello Kitty so much that instead of her usual nickname, Kitty-chan, he uses the more respectful “Kitty-san.”

Ryo Nishimiya’s character pick is a two-for-one, the twin angels Kiki and Lala, which is also why he has differently colored shoelaces, one pink and one sky blue, to match the siblings’ respective hair colors.

And finally, Seiichiro Minamoto has a thing for Cinnamoroll, the sweetly named Sanrio subseries about a group of puppies.

So what do the Sanrio Boys do on their shared Twitter account? Well, they post pictures of themselves hanging out together,

▼ 2-D fandom being what it is these days, some of the shots look like the boys are maybe kind of sort of on a date.

But mostly, they show off all the cool new Sanrio merch they’ve recently picked up, in a series of surreal virtual haul illustrations that are promoting real-life products.

Still, the whole thing is done with Sanrio’s usual level of polish and enthusiasm, so odds are long-time fans of the brand, or this style of artwork in general, won’t mind the obvious marketing angle.

▼ Even when Sanrio is literally hitting people over the head with it.

Related: Sanrio Danshi Twitter
Source: Kai-You
Top image: Twitter/@Sdan_sanrio (1, 2) (edited by RocketNews24)