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On Nov 1, a completely new kind of Disney Store opened in the Takayashima Station Mall in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture. Until now, all Disney Stores around the world followed the strict design specifications of the originals in America.
However, for the first time ever a Disney Store with a totally different look has opened in an effort to target adult female Disney fans. Rather than stickers, school supplies and stuffed animals, shoppers will be able to buy leather bags, cosmetics and smartphone accessories.
Normally, Disney Stores have that wide open space and blue and red motif we’ve all seen before. But this new outlet has abandoned that formula for a slimmed down size creamy white color scheme for more subtle mature tastes.
That being said, they haven’t completely dried up all the youthful fun of the originals. There are still mirrors that you can look into to create sparkles around your head and pictures that change depending what angle you look at them. All the playfulness is intact just not as in-your-face.
Although the range of stuffed animals has decreased for the original store, there is still a fair amount including the popular line of teddy bears, UniBEARsity. In fact, to celebrate the opening, there are a limited number of bears that have never been seen before and never will after.
For this brief time, you can get a brown “Mocha & Pudding” or white “Whiｐ & Puffy” for 3,000 yen each. All bears are adorned with either a sky-blue tie or ribbon exclusive to this single Disney Store.
This concept store designed in Japan to attract the more lucrative adult market and also focus more on Disney characters especially popular in Japan.
© RocketNews24
15 Comments
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Triumvere
Surprising that this wasn't done sooner, given the obvious market for it here in Japan. Give the people what they want,
tkoind2
Did they really need to tailor one in Japan for older women? I mean spend 10mins in any major station in Tokyo and you can see legions of "child-women" with their things only kids would be caught dead with in public elsewhere.
It would be ok if it was just about expression of taste and love for such things. But it is too frequently combined with child like behavior and sappy cuteness that could give you diabetic shock at 100 meters distance.
I miss women who are happy to be mature. Happy to be adults. Who show confidence and intelligence over simply being a plastic doll. Kawai is like some kind of out of control plague in Japan and it is just sad to see mature adult women behaving like or wishing to appear child like.
It is not Japanese culture. It is a modern manifestation of saturated marketing and the most effective marketing propaganda visible on earth. Mass numbers of a generation sold on the idea that being an acceptable woman means being a child. It is pretty sick when you think about it.
Robert Dykes
I thought all Disney stores in Japan already did this?
Cos
I agree Robert, I was expecting a 50 shades of mickey store, well something we don't already see in all shopping malls...
Jimizo
A 'creamy white color scheme for more subtle mature tastes' in a Disney Store for adults? Mature tastes....
Fadamor
It probably runs off of your keitai. Make sure you use the proper interface!
nath
Will there be batteries included?
unequivocallyobservingjapan
Only in japan. Adult in the physical sense but not in the intellectual sense.
Ronald F Stark
To some Japanese women Disney is all the REAL culture they need. I do agree with some of you, what's the difference between the adult female fan and the children? It's the same Minnie Mouse.
diuneahma
Give the women a break... Hate it when people think they have a more superior culture back home... Sheesh
Ah_so
Surely the tastes of an adult female Japanese Disney fan and a child are much the same already?
smithinjapan
Unless they have sex toys or something I don't see how it's going to be much different -- I have never met a Japanese female adult who didn't turn into a child upon the mention of Disney Land. A middle-aged female I know goes to Disney Land in Tokyo five or six times a year from Osaka, staying in the Disney hotels, riding the bullet trains, etc. She's rich and not married, so all the power to her, but when I think of how one year's total costs of doing what she does could give her a year or more backpacking around Asia and other parts of the world, experiencing REAL culture, meeting new people, trying new things, and learning about the world, I just shake my head and think about what a waste it is. But hey, that's me.
tmarie
So a store opening for those pathetic adult women who still aren't over cartoons characters? Just what Japan needs. A store to make them think this kind of childish behaviour is what normal adults like and purchase.
tmarie
Diuneahma, who said anything about culture? Grown women spending thousands of dollars on toys is pathetic whatever the culture.
Funnybonesup
pamelotNOV. 05, 2012 - 10:26AM JST
Will there be batteries included?
No. I went to buy some batteries yesterday.... When I got them home and opened the box.....'batteries not included.'