The Hello Kitty craze brought 4,000 to Fresno’s Fashion Fair in March. It’s back

Hello Kitty has always been popular, but popular enough to draw almost 4,000 people to an event in Fresno?

Yes, really.

That’s how many people came to Fashion Fair mall in March when the Hello Kitty Cafe stopped by selling merchandise and edible goodies.

Hello Kitty is coming back from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday. The cafe is actually a van with a window on the side that props open. It will park at the mall’s main entrance in the outdoor village.

Last time around, the cafe sold Hello Kitty-shaped cookies, mini cakes and a set of dainty macaron cookies. Water bottles shaped like her bow, mugs and other merchandise were available, too.

Her image is pop culture phenomenon, but she is not a cat, according to parent company Sanrio. She is a little girl – a girl who’s well over 40 years old.

The character has attracted young and old alike over the years. It stays relevant, in part, because Sanrio licenses the image to other entities. They create limited-edition merchandise often only available for about a month, giving shoppers an incentive to snap them up.

That’s how Hello Kitty’s face has ended up on a car exhaust pipe, a quesadilla maker than imprints her face on every slice, urinal cakes and a series of merchandise that blends Hello Kitty with KISS, the hard rock band known for its dramatic face makeup.

If Fresno event is anything like the last one, people will start lining up around 7 a.m. The mall does not allow overnight camping.

“Before they even they opened, there was about 1,000 people waiting in line,” said Fashion Fair senior marketing manager Brian Malony, who said the line stretched from the mall’s entrance to JCPenney. He called it “a crazy big deal.”

This story was originally published August 23, 2017 at 11:38 AM with the headline "The Hello Kitty craze brought 4,000 to Fresno’s Fashion Fair in March. It’s back."