One would think that making a Hello Kitty pencil with a eraser on the top would be pretty straight forward. Looks can be deceiving.

Let's start at the beginning. Sanrio is the owner of Hello Kitty. Of all the quadzillion things Hello Kitty, Sanrio only makes a handful Hello Kitty items themselves. Other companies make the rest. They are given permission by Sanrio to make these Hello Kitty goodies and then sell them to us retailers.

Sanrio has it's own specialty line of what is pretty much the classic Hello Kitty line of merchandise. It sells this line all over the world, but for the most part it is only found in the Sanrio stores and speciality stores. It is not found in the big box or mass market stores, but those store have their own version of Hello Kitty, but it is pretty generic. (Generic means boring).

At our sister store, Games People Play, we carry the classic Sanrio. We first picked it up in 1973, and Games People Play may be the oldest continuing retailer of Sanrio and Hello Kitty in the United States.

Back to the Hello Kitty Pencils on the left.  Sanrio decides that it wants, as part of it's speciality line, some Hello Kitty pencils with erasers. Being very familiar with most of the quality pencil manufacturers, they decide on BeGoody.

You may know BeGoody from the pencils with erasers from sausalitoferry.com. Sanrio says to BeGoody we want this sort of artwork on the body of the pencil and we want on some of the pencils Hello Kitty erasers and on the other pencils, let's use the apple eraser which is part of the Hello Kitty KT line. (KT stands for "kitty terrestrial". Don't ask).

BeGoody then goes to Dream Zensinsyoji, the other maker of Japanese erasers which you also may be familiar with from sausalitoferry.com. Dream Zensinsyoji makes the erasers, sends them to BeGoody which then assembles the complete Hello Kitty pencil and sends them to Sanrio, We, Games People Play, buy them not from Sanrio, but from a company known as Nakajima, the US distributor of Sanrio in the US.

Nakajima also makes most of the Hello Kitty plush for Sanrio.

If you are still reading this by now, we are sure you have a headache. Go cuddle your stuffed Hello Kitty.