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Sales of My Melody merchandise featuring Sanrio character’s mom’s life advice get cancelled

SoraNews24 Jan 20, 2022
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Decision follows backlash to advice such as “A woman’s enemy is always other women,” but not everyone is happy.

Japanese apparel/lifestyle brand Its’demo recently announced a Valentine’s Day-themed tie-up with Sanrio character My Melody. In addition to the bunny herself, the line also features supporting cast members of the franchise, including My Melody’s mom, who appeared in the Onegai My Melody anime from 2005. One of Mom’s defining traits is her caustic wit, so as part of its special line of merchandise Its’Demo was planning to release items with bits of her life advice written on them.

Its’Demo previewed the merchandise line back in December, but this week the negative reaction from some Japanese social media users to My Melody’s mom’s advice, in particular “A woman’s enemy is always other women,” started to get widespread attention in Japan. In response, on Monday, one day before the Its’Demo My Melody lineup was scheduled to go on sale, the company issued the following statement on its website.

“A portion of the products that we had developed for the My Melody Valentine project will not be offered for sale. Thank you for your understanding.”

Though the statement doesn’t directly mention which items have been scratched from the lineup, a quick look at the My Melody Valentine items that are still being offered for sale shows none with Mom’s advice.

Its’demo also issued the statement through its official Twitter account, where commenters’ reactions have been almost entirely negative to the decision to cancel the sale of the Mom’s advice items.

“I’d been looking forward to the Mom’s advice items ever since they were announced!”
“I was so happy that there was going to be merch for My Melody’s mom’s advice, and now it gets cancelled because some people decided to make a stir about it.”
“I liked the mom’s advice in Onegai My Melody, so I was all set to buy the merch.”
“I was planning to go buy them as soon as they went on sale in the morning.”
“So sad that we won’t be able to buy them. Something that fans were looking forward to gets swept away because of some mass media outlets and online influencers.”

With the mom’s advice items being pulled from the lineup just one day before they were supposed to go on sale, it’s likely the items have already been manufactured. A few commenters expressed their hope that maybe they’d be offered as online-only items, but that doesn’t seem to be an avenue Its’demo is considering, so they’re likely to be disposed of.

Source: J-Cast News via Livedoor News via Jin, Its’demo, Twitter/@ITSDEMO_jp
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Insert image: Its’demo online store
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