Anya and Kitty-chan form friendship and swap outfits.
There’s a lot to like about anime/manga Spy x Family, between its ongoing espionage, exciting action sequences, and deft use of both low-key and slapstick humor. Of course, there’s also the fact that it’s an incredibly heartwarming and cute series.
Hold on, heartwarming and cute? That’s also an accurate description of Hello Kitty and her Sanrio pals, and sure enough they’re joining the Spy x Family cast for an adorable new merch line and popup store.
Following up on her team-ups with Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, and the magical PreCure girls, Hello Kitty is now saying hello to the Forger family. Each member of the core Spy x Family cast gets a special Sanrio friend, and naturally Kitty-chan herself is paired with Anya, the precocious scene-stealing psychic who’s the only one who really knows what’s going on in the Forger household.
Each piece of artwork has the Spy x Family and Sanrio characters swapping costumes. That means Anya dresses up in Hello Kitty’s overalls, and she exchanges her usual hair accessories for ones that look like cat ears too. Kitty, meanwhile, slips on Anya’s Eden Academy uniform.
Dapper dad/doctor/secret agent Loid loans his snappy suit to fellow blondie Pompompurin…
…and mom/office worker/professional killer Yor hangs out with My Melody.
Even the family dog, Bond, gets in on the fun, partnered with Cinnamoroll and getting a new bowtie in the same shade of blue as the Sanrio pooch’s eyes.
The lineup hits all the must-haves for a merch collection, with the characters appearing as/on acrylic mini standees, clear files, hand mirrors, towels, pouches, and tote bags.
There are, naturally, blind-buy trinkets too, with 10 possible designs for pins and trading cards…
…and five for keychains.
If you’re a completionist kind of collector, you’ll be glad to know that the ordinarily random items can also be bought as box sets, guaranteeing you one of each item at the same price as if you’d been lucky enough to acquire them all individually without any duplicates.
The whole lineup is available for preorder now through the Toho Animation Store online shop here, but the items aren’t scheduled to ship until September. If that’s too long for you to wait, though, a Spy Family x Sanrio popup shop will be running at the Ikebukuro branch of lifestyle goods shop Loft in downtown Tokyo from August 13 to 31 where you can get your hands on the items a little sooner, and popup stores are also planned for Loft branches in Osaka and Fukuoka as well, with their dates yet to be announced.
Related: Loft Ikebukuro branch
Source: Spy x Family official website via Yahoo! Japan News via Game Watch
Top image: Toho Animation Store
Insert images: Spy x Family official website, Toho Animation Store (1, 2)
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