The shape of Hello Kitty was slightly changed for a more rugged, cool look to appeal to men in their teens and early 20s, Sanrio said.

For example, a picture of the cat on a 4,095 yen ($36, £18) black T-shirt has the words, "hello kitty", instead of the usual dots for the eyes and nose

I know a bunch of women who will want this shirt.

Badtz is the way to go here.

I know a bunch of women who will want this shirt.
Luckily, Japanese men are pretty slender on the whole, so you should be in luck. Try jlist.com

On Preview: I saw Badtz Maru fuzzy dice for sale once, but at the time I didn't have a car, so I did not get them. If I can track some down, I'll put them in the pi-mobile.

I kind of go for Chococat.

Recently I read something very interesting about Hello Kitty - can't remember where. It was about why she has such an odd iconic power. The suggestion was that because she does not have a mouth, her face is read as kind of a blank slate, and the viewer projects emotion onto her, thus identifying with her.

In looking around for some commentary on this (I found a lot, yes, it's intentional), I also found this poem.

I've heard the Hello Kitty as emotional tabula rasa idea too. Actually, ahem, I attended a presentation on the history of Hello Kitty at an anime con a couple years ago.

I bet that was fascinating.

A photo I'll never post on teh intarwebs is this hilarious series of my daughter parading around showing off her hello kitty socks, wearing nothing else. She stretches her legs out and points and all to make sure they're in the picture, in every shot. It took hours before I could convince her to get dressed that day. I showed her a Hello Kitty hat in a shop last summer and got it for her and since then she's been pretty much obsessed with hello kitty.

Hello Kitty is for girls? What do you mean?
*Looks sheepish.*
;-)

Yeah, Japanese manga and toys and general pop culture are heavily thought out in terms of psychology. Women in manga aimed at men, for example, are generally portrayed as small and non-threatening, as Japanese boys and men are thought (within their own culture) to be lacking confidence in regards to women. It's all very contrived and "marketed."