What Happens When You Mix Hello Kitty With Spam? A Snack for Fans

Supercute Friendship Festival features kits to make Hello Kitty Spam musubi; songs, selfies, tattoos

ADAM THOMPSON

Updated June 23, 2015 9:25 p.m. ET

INGLEWOOD, Calif.—Soon after the doors of the Forum opened to Hello Kitty’s Supercute Friendship Festival on a recent Friday afternoon, Cassandra and Ramiro Treviño headed straight for the Spam booth on the arena floor. They had unfinished business to attend to.

The Fresno, Calif., couple had failed to procure one of the limited-edition Hello Kitty Spam musubi kits before they sold out in the fall at Hello Kitty Con 2014. But they happily handed over $20 for a bright yellow box with two plastic rice molds and a can of Spam, part of the $4,000 they say they spent on travel, tickets and merchandise for the event weekend.

Hello Kitty Spam musubi

Ms. Treviño, a graphic artist, described herself as a medium-level Hello Kitty enthusiast: “I don’t have the Hello Kitty car. I do have a Hello Kitty engagement ring, but that’s where it ends. I didn’t have the Hello Kitty pink wedding dress.”

The Forum was an early proving ground to see whether the marriage of Spam and Hello Kitty will last. More than eight billion cans of the potted meat product have been produced since its 1937 debut. The cartoon figure with nearly 14 million Facebook fans—she’s not a cat, as any die-hard knows, but a catlike girl who stands five apples tall—has driven a four-decade merchandising march by Japan-based Sanrio Co. Ltd.

The match began in 2014. Employees for Sanrio Inc., the U.S. subsidiary, had noticed YouTube videos popping up of Hello Kitty devotees preparing Spam musubi shaped like their favorite character. Spam musubi, born in Japan and huge in Hawaii, is a variation on sushi, with cooked Spam replacing fish. Spam sits on a rectangular bed of rice and is wrapped with dried seaweed, or nori, to form the body. A large ball of rice forms the head. Nori serves as whiskers and eyes, a bell pepper for the nose.

Katie Chin, a Los Angeles-based chef and Sanrio consultant, likes to add a flower-shaped boiled carrot for “Hawaiian flair” to her culinary Hello Kitty. Ahead of her presentation atHormel Foods Corp., Ms. Chin prepared Hello Kitty musubi at her sister’s home in Edina, Minn., then rode nearly two hours south to Hormel’s Austin, Minn., headquarters with the edible cat on her lap.

With an overlapping fan base, especially in Asia, Hormel proved an easy sell. Executives from both companies say their cultures blend well: They understand the power of camp value. Anyone can buy Hello Kitty-themed electric guitars or a canjo: a stringed instrument with an empty Spam can at the base.

ENLARGE

Katie Chin, right, prepared Hello Kitty Spam musubi on the Forum floor while Jackie Bumgardner, center rear, sells kits for fans to prepare the dish at home. PHOTO: STEFANIE KEENAN/GETTY IMAGES FOR SANRIO

Hormel ordered 2,400 Spam musubi kits for the Los Angeles convention. Jackie Bumgardner, a manager at Austin-based Games People Play, which handles licensing for Hormel, recalled lines as long as a city block at KittyCon. Sanrio Inc. President Janet Hsu said, “It was our fastest-selling item. We couldn’t keep it in stock.” The kits showed up on eBay for as much as $100.

Sales of the kits were strong enough for Hormel to commit to sponsoring this year’s Supercute tour, which next stops at Sleep Train Arena in Sacramento, Calif., starting Friday. Less a traditional family-themed show like “Disney On Ice” than what Sanrio Inc. marketing executive David Marchi called an “exploratory festival environment,” the event is anchored by upbeat musical numbers both original (including “Small Gift, Big Smile,” which is also Hello Kitty’s motto) and recycled (Don Ho’s “Tiny Bubbles”). The arena floor is dotted with a selfie station, a temporary tattoo parlor and mountains of souvenirs.

Games People Play deputized Bryant Olsen to keep the Spam moving on more than 35 North American stops. Born and raised in Austin, the 40-year-old guesses he got the gig because he was single, childless and willing to leave home for over a year. A friend calls him an “accidental carny.”

He was charged with convincing Forum attendees who paid prices approaching $300 for VIP tickets to buy the kit. Mr. Olsen has also become immersed in kawaii, a Japanese term translating roughly to “extreme cuteness.” Before the tour began in May, he knew nothing about Hello Kitty. Now he has started memorizing the songs and recognizing secondary characters like the mischievous penguin Badtz-Maru.

ENLARGE

Bryant Olsen, left, and Jackie Bumgardner sell Hello Kitty Spam musubi kits at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif.PHOTO: ADAM THOMPSON/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

During one of six Forum shows, Mr. Olsen and Ms. Bumgardner ran the Spam booth while Ms. Chin prepared to lead a series of demonstrations. She said many Hello Kitty lovers refuse to eat their creations: “Most people want to keep it, show it to your friends, put it in your freezer, so you can check on it from time to time.” She has two in her freezer. She drove to the show in a convertible Hello Kitty Smart Car with large Hello Kitty decals on each door.

Usually wordless, Hello Kitty does have lines in the Supercute numbers. She appeals so widely, Ms. Chin said, because “she speaks from her heart. And because she has this Zen exterior, any girl, whether she’s a blinged-out girl, a punk girl, a preppy girl, projects what she’s feeling onto Hello Kitty.” Ms. Chin, 50, says she didn’t fall for Hello Kitty until she went through a divorce in her 30s.

ENLARGE

Fans gathered for Hello Kitty’s Supercute Friendship Festival the second weekend of June at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif. PHOTO: STEFANIE KEENAN/GETTY IMAGES FOR SANRIO

The Treviños, who attended one of Ms. Chin’s musubi workshops, both got hooked as children.

“You put your money where your priorities are, whatever makes you happy,” Ms. Treviño said on her way to spending $700 on souvenirs. “I was raised around it. You don’t feel embarrassed until somebody says, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ ”

Not all of Hello Kitty’s superfans were ready to buy absolutely everything she was selling. Maria Fleischman is an L.A.-based designer who founded the blog Hello Kitty Junkie. She adores the character so much she once competed on a game show in Tokyo for foreigners steeped in Japanese culture. She uses a Hello Kitty-inspired emoticon =^_^= when emailing.

But she couldn’t make a case for buying the musubi kit. “I live in a 600-square-foot apartment with my boyfriend,” she said. “If I bring in too many things, he’ll throw them away or hide them.”

Write to Adam Thompson at adam.thompson@wsj.com