Among the enormous population of Happy Mascots, there are some that are able to reach true celebrity status. Tarako Kewpie currently enjoys massive fame, with its theme song scoring high in the charts recently, and its likeness dangling from many mobile phones. Tarako is actually blobs of salted Alaska pollock roe, which indeed has an orangy-pink colour. It's quite tasty with spaghetti and some dried seaweed, and makes for a very easy dish.
The popular theme song is performed by a duo of girls wearing large tarako-shaped hats who go by the name of Kigurumi. Their full-length video can be found here on YouTube, as well as the video for the Xmas "Wall of Sound" version. (Note: Japanese media companies aren't too happy with YouTube, so Japanese clips are frequently removed from the site).
It's a very clever trick to give a Happy Mascot human form, because as such they've been able to appear on TV shows. Whenever I pass one of the game arcades around here, I always hear the Tarako song coming from one of the toy-grabber cabinets, which is filled with the keychains of the mascot. On Saturday, I saw Kigurumi hats, the CD and a full-size Tarako costume for sale in a shop nearby, with of course the music playing from a speaker directly above it.
For true surrealism, be sure to have a look at the TV ads in the gallery of the Tarako Kewpie website. The marching armies of Tarakos have to be seen to be believed.
It must be noted that Tarako Kewpie is an offspring of QP Corporation's far more human-looking mascot, which is just a cute baby.
3 comments:
It's particularly this one, along with the seal/sushi characters, that I find disturbing. The stuff of nightmares, I tell you!
I love these posts on the "Happy Mascots"!!
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