Projects of Hello Past

Coconuts Musume

  I was sorting through  some of my old J-pop promotional Posters from back in the day, and came across a group that I hadn't thought of in YEARS- Back in the early days of Morning Musume, Tsunku’s fellow SharanQ’er Makoto tried his hand at creating a group, and decided on a Hawaii based group called COCONUTS MUSUME. Though Coconuts Musume never quite made it, several of the members continued on in Hello Project with revamped Coconuts Musume releases as well as HP sub-unit “Shuffle” groups  and became quite well-known in their own right, Ayaka, for example was a joy to watch on Hello Mornings with her “English Lessons” upon the poor Momusu girls, and demure member Mika became the most prolific of all the Coconuts Musume girls when she became a member of the zany HP Sub-unit MINIMONI!
  It was in fact Mika Todd that figures into the story I’m about to tell … Way back when I was still working at Tower Records and J-pop was all the rage, they’d created a three-rack section solely for the Japan releases and above it, board frames for two promotion posters. Those posters rotated every few months, and if someone was lucky, they were able to take them home after promotions ended if the J-pop buyer gave his blessing. 
   So anyway, back in the summer of 1999, the aforementioned Coconuts Musume “Dance and Chance” poster had been posted up, and sometime during the week, who should stroll in to Tower Records but Miss Mika Todd herself! The J-pop buyer saw her and said to me, “Hey! Let’s take down the poster and let Mika autograph it for the store!!” I thought it was a GREAT idea and ran to get a ladder and brought the mounted poster down. With the poster under arms, we caught up to Mika and asked her if she’d mind signing the Coconuts Musume poster for us, and to our delight, she smiled and said “Oh…Okay?” She seemed genuinely surprised someone recognized her, and as we handed her a permanent marker, she paused uncertainly at the poster, unsure of where to start, before laughing and saying “Well, I guess I’ll have to get used to doing this, right?” “Right!” we laughed back! 

Mika's autograph!

 We thanked her and put the poster back up into the section, until the time came for a new poster to go up, and was I surprised when the J-pop buyer came to my room and asked me if I wanted the autographed poster since I liked Hello Project stuff so much! I took it happily, and I have to say that for awhile there, with the advent of Minimoni and all, it was quite cool that I had a poster she signed for us in person! Ah, but members and groups move on and on, and over time the poster got buried under a whole slew of newer promotional items, what a surprise to uncover this gem after all these years!