It’s Hard To Believe, But Tween Pop Just Got A Little Cuter

If the Aly & AJ tour is coming through your metropolitan area, don’t count on avoiding the cute explosion simply by not attending their show: The sisters will roll through your town this summer in a customized Hello Kitty tour bus, courtesy of tour sponsor Sanrio:

We walked through the bus with the gals and this is (some of) what we saw:

* A Hello Kitty water dispenser, popcorn maker, coffee maker and toaster that toasts a Hello Kitty face on your bread. Ice cube trays that make Hello Kitty shaped ice. * Hello Kitty blankets, sheets, pillows, towels, rugs. A toilet seat cover – that’s a rare item, we’re told by the Hello Kitty decorators. Not many people even know they exist – so don’t tell anyone! * Strands of Hello Kitty lights attached to the top bunks where Aly and AJ slept early Friday as the bus headed north to a show in Concord. Litters of plush Hello Kitty dolls, Hello Kitty clothes for those dolls, guitar straps and guitar cases that would have to be moved before they could even think about sleeping…

“This is our mom’s room,” says AJ, walking us into the master bedroom at the back of the bus. And let’s really, really hope mama loves pink as much as her daughters think she does.

“Check this out – it’s a humidifier!” AJ says, pointing to a sorta egg-shaped Hello Kitty.

“Because our mom has asthma,” Aly explains.

“How cool is that?!?” AJ says.

One can only assume the Sanrio humidifier (a bit of product marketing that even Gene Simmons hasn’t considered–to our knowledge), and not her mother’s asthma, is what AJ finds “cool”–but the product placement for the Hello Kitty marketers is near brilliant, from the banners unveiled at each show to the matching Hello Kitty Stratocasters the girls play onstage. The Aly & AJ tour also features High School Musical cast member Corbin Bleu on some dates, thus maxing out the tour’s appeal to the fifth-grade girl demographic. The only frightening thing is that if the teen pop demographic is the only way the music biz can generate revenue successfully, High School Musical 3 might be the only disc available in stores by this time next year.

Aly & AJ have a new ride [OC Register]