Hello Kitty Nails, 19 Years On: You Can Finally Buy Them
In 2007 a single photo of 3D Hello Kitty acrylics became OneInchPunch's biggest post, and almost every comment asked where to buy them. Now you can.
On 1 June 2007 we posted one photo: a woman holding up long pink acrylics with a little sculpted Hello Kitty head on every nail, found via HelloKittyHell.com, plus a single line wondering how nails could get any less practical. That was the whole post. It became the most-read thing OneInchPunch ever published, with 1,087,781 views, and the comments ran to 27 pages.
Reading those comments back, it's easy to see why. Nearly all of them ask the same thing in different ways: where do I get these, how much were they, can someone do mine. A few people hated them (loudly), and one pointed out they'd snag on everything. Mostly, though, it was a page full of people who wanted Hello Kitty on their hands and had nowhere to buy it. We didn't have an answer either.
There is one now, because Sanrio licenses Hello Kitty for nails and the big brands have taken it up. OPI has done three Hello Kitty ranges: 12 shades in 2016; a Christmas 2019 collection of 12 shades and three glitters, sold in the UK through OPI's own site; and a 50th-anniversary set in July 2024 with six shades and four press-on styles ($15.99 in the US). The same month, Aprés, the brand behind Gel-X extensions, put Hello Kitty and Kuromi on its gel kits. Glamnetic's Hello Kitty press-ons are still on sale in the US: 30 sheer pink nails with a velvet Hello Kitty accent, $21.99 and marked "last call".
None of them is quite the 2007 set, which had the heads built up in 3D on every finger. For that you still need a nail artist and some patience. But everyone who asked in those comments where to get them would at least have somewhere to start.
You won't see the original photo here: it was an agency picture, and we're not reusing those. The Internet Archive kept the old page, comments and all.
This is the first piece in From the Museum, where we go back to the old OneInchPunch posts people still look for and find out what happened next.
