A Hello Kitty for October
I was walking through the aisles of a shop we don't often go in, looking for Nấm's Halloween costume, when I saw it. An orange tumbler the size of a small vase, with Hello Kitty peeking out of a jack-o-lantern on the front. I stopped for longer than I expected to.
There is something about Hello Kitty that does not leave you once you have grown up with her. She was on pencil cases and lunch boxes when I was small, the way she is now on tumblers and sweatshirts in the Halloween aisle of a shop I had never been in before. Some part of me that is still ten years old felt found.
I picked it up, put it down, walked away, came back. Thành says I have a particular face I make when something has quietly charmed me. I was apparently making it.
What it actually is
The cup is the Silver Buffalo Hello Kitty Halloween tumbler. Stainless steel, double-walled, forty ounces, with a screw-on lid and a handle and a reusable straw. The body is pumpkin orange. The straw is green. Hello Kitty sits inside the jack-o-lantern on the front with her little pink bow, and the whole thing is about as subtle as you would expect.
It fits inside my car's cup holder, which surprised me given the size. The handle is sturdy. It does not feel flimsy in the way cheap licensed merchandise sometimes feels. When I tapped the side with a fingernail, it made the dull, substantial thunk of a cup that is built to last. That was the moment I decided it would come home.
How I use it
Mostly for tea. Which is the slightly silly part. I make a proper pot in the morning and pour the whole thing into this enormous orange cup, and then carry it around the house for two hours while it stays hot. I've taken it on school runs and on a walk down to the post box, and once to a parents' meeting at Kẹo's preschool where I felt distinctly more grown up than my drink looked.
It keeps hot things hot for longer than I need. Cold things stay cold well past the point where I would have finished the drink. The lid is properly leak-resistant if you don't tip it all the way over. I haven't tested it upside down in a handbag and I don't intend to.
"Mẹ, it's smiling at me," Nấm said the first time she saw it on the kitchen counter. She is three. The pumpkin, to her, is smiling.
One important thing about washing it
Hand wash only, and be gentle on the outside. The jack-o-lantern design is a printed transfer, not paint fused into the metal, and if you scrub it with anything rough or put it in the dishwasher it will come off. Reading through the reviews, almost everyone who complained about the print scratching had washed it the wrong way. The reviewers whose cups still looked perfect a year later had hand-washed them carefully.
This is a seasonal object I want to keep for several Octobers, so I rinse the outside with warm water, use a little washing-up liquid on my fingers, and pat it dry with a tea towel. The inside gets a normal bottle-brush treatment. If you're giving this as a gift, pass the note along. The design comes off quickly if nobody warns the recipient.
Who might like one
Someone who grew up with Hello Kitty and isn't entirely ready to give her up. Someone who takes a very large drink with them everywhere. A child old enough to carry forty ounces without tipping herself over, so not Nấm, not yet, though she keeps trying to lift mine.
It's a good gift too, if you know the right recipient. Reviewers have written about giving it to Hello Kitty-obsessed seven-year-olds, to mothers, to grown friends who still light up at the sight of Sanrio characters the way we used to at a shop display when we were small. 3,804 reviews, 4.8 stars. The one-star complaints are almost all about washing or the occasional cosmetic scratch on arrival, not about the cup itself.
A small October ritual
October is short. The leaves turn, the children draw pumpkin faces on paper plates at nursery, and for a few weeks there are small lanterns glowing in front windows all along our road. I put the cup on the kitchen counter at the end of September and it stays there through the end of October. It holds tea, and on one cold morning, the last of a soup I didn't finish at lunch (I would not recommend this but I did it). In November I wash it carefully, dry it, and tuck it into the cupboard until next year.
A cup is a cup. But this one makes me smile when I reach for it at six in the morning, which on some mornings is worth quite a lot.
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