Topic: [REJECTED] Tag implication: sweetypuss -> hot_topic

Posted under Tag Alias and Implication Suggestions

faucet

Member

I've searched a little and I'm not really seeing any evidence of Sweetypuss ever being a Hot Topic mascot outside of random people on the Internet saying so, and then other random Internet people also saying it wasn't.

EDIT: Looking at those links shared, I found an archived page from Jim Benton's website in 2004, which states:
"You've seen her at Hot Topic, or Spencers, or maybe wandering around outside your local Insane Asylum.
Now get her on her own website: Sweetypuss.com"

If it was Hot Topic's mascot I doubt it would be sold at Spencer's too.

The archived version of Sweetypuss.com at the time seemed to be owned by a company named Blackjack Inc. which is presumably some sort of company owned by Jim Benton that was used to hold the copyrights or license the merchandise to stores like Hot Topic.

EDIT 2:
Blackjackinc.com actually still exists in 2022 (somehow everybody going through all the archived stuff missed that? lol) and still features Sweetypuss on the homepage, with an image on the header and the page title being "Blackjack Inc. - Shop for It's Happy Bunny, Dog of Glee, Sweetypuss and more."

EDIT 3:
If you can believe this tweet, somebody emailed Jim Benton and his email response confirms that Sweetypuss is his property. I'd normally take a tweet like this with a grain of salt but everything else I've uncovered seems to back it up pretty well. Here is where I quit trawling the Internet for information on some edgy Hello Kitty clone that I'd never even heard of prior to clicking on this thread.

Now we know it's not a copyright of Hot Topic, where should we go from here. An implication to blackjack_inc or jim_benton? Actually... jim_benton already appears to be his artist tag.

Updated