HELLA KITTY

SKILLCULT APPLE BREEDING PROJECT

THIS PAGE IS FOR INFORMATION AND NOTES ON MY SEEDLING APPLE HELLA KITTY.

Hella Kitty is a small and adorable pink fleshed dessert apple that packs an acidic punch. It’s parentage is Wickson x Rubaiyat.

Once upon a time in a secret lab near you, there were a bunch of little kids. These kids weren’t just any kids, they were screened and hand picked to be kidnapped into a classified government program to create super spies and hackers. Their life was hard and dreary. They ate bland institutional food and trained all day. At night they were put in cells to sleep on hard beds with no covers and barely enough heat. Their entire existence was co-opted to feed the spy machine. No laughing was allowed and they only got to watch cartoons once a year for 5 minutes as a form of torture to make them angry, frustrated killers. Their cells were pure white with no decoration allowed. Toys and stuffed animals were strictly forbidden. If caught making dolls from their plastic spoons and paper napkins they were put into isolation for months.

Even in the darkest times though, nature finds a way. They learned when they were not watched and whispered rebellion into each other’s ears. Well, the girls did anyway. Being super geniuses by nature, trained in subterfuge, they slowly hatched a plan. They would be free if it was the last thing they ever did. The problem was, they had been driven to a psychological madness by the inhumane treatment and denial they had suffered. This couldn’t go well.

One day the plan was put into action. Within minutes they strangled guards with socks battered them with their combat boots and scratched out their eyes. Weapons were seized as the mad horde of feminine fury took over the facility like the well oiled machine they were trained to be. They knew what they must do and locked themselves in the high security lab. Remaining personnel tried frantically to attain access to the lab but their efforts were no use. Every attempt was thwarted by the tiny fingers of tween super hackers flying across keyboards and reading binary code by sight. In the fully equipped lab they could do anything. Did they create a virus that turned adults into kids, or contact the outside world for help? No, they had been driven insane by white walls and the intolerable absence of any fun. So instead set out on a singular task only insane little girls would dream up. They put all their resources into creating ray guns that turn everything pink. Not just any pink, the perfect pink. After some hissy fits and hair pulling, they arrived in unanimous agreement, this was the perfect pink, neon bright, blinding, girly pink without a trace of adultness or boyness. 

In a day they were armed to the teeth and exited the lab with ray guns blazing. Unused to the neon color and shocked at becoming instantly pinkified, guards were confused and easily subdued by the girls elite fighting skills. As slender legs and arms jujitsued the adults into unconsciousness, their now pink blood splattered the walls as the inmates slayed them like a pack of pink piranhas.  Next they took out the boys, leaving them rolling on the floors of their cells in mental agony at being permanently pinkified by skillful marksmanship. 

While the full force of the government gathered outside with swat teams on the roof and helicopters buzzing they escaped through secret tunnels dispersing into quiet neighborhoods, country landscapes and cities. They terrorized the populace and pinkified everything in their path. They raided convenience stores and gas stations gorging on candy, the epic amounts of sugar feeding their frenzy. One by one they were eventually stopped, captured, locked up or killed. Peace was restored, although it was a pink peace and we all know that is not peace.

In the chaos a singular event occurred. One of the girls with crazed eyes and a wicked grin sprayed an innocent and sweet kitten, perched in an apple tree enjoying the warm sunshine while watching amusedly as bees buzzed in the flowers. The girl aimed, deliberately, with venom in her eyes blasting the cat so hard with pink rays that its molecular make up vibrated to the point that she melted a little inside, absorbing some of the apple trees DNA through her little paws. The cat which infamously became known to all as Hella Kitty was born that day.

The kitten woke up grogily on the ground the next day, with an apple shaped head, pink inside and out and her sweetness buried under an acerbic attitude. She ran away from home and lived like the world owed her something. Bratty and entitled, she set forth in her messy pink fur causing chaos wherever she went. She lifted her tail wherever she went leaving pink graffiti on walls and billboards. Hella Kitty lived completely on candy stolen from anywhere she could get it. Many children were left crying as she ran down the street with their half eaten candy bars. She was seen running out of quickie marts with bags of lemon heads and Sour Patch Kids. She once narrowly escaped death when she dove head first into a cotton candy machine at a seedy carnival, but was captured and added to the collection of freaks and curiosities. She hissed and spit at the onlookers. In other words, she was pretty much like she was when free.

Eventually she was acquired by scientists who poked and prodded and studied her DNA. That DNA found its way into the hands of a Japanese entrepreneur who eventually created an “improved” version of pink cat that became all the rage overnight in japan. They could not be cloned fast enough to meet demands.  Alas, they were not docile enough and once the owners found they could not scrub out all the pink spray since everything it touched was molecularly modified, and as emergency room visits rose from random attacks by insane kittens, the trend was quickly abandoned and the cats slaughtered to make pink fur coats for the mistresses of Yakuza bosses. Rumor has it that research continues to create permanent stains and breed ornery cats as super weapons. Will we never learn?

As pink walls were painted over, pink landscapes dug up and replanted and new make-up technology was developed to hide pink skin, memory faded into legend.

At least one good thing came from this tragedy of human folly. A group of renegade activists, determined to derive something good from it all engineered a delicious apple using benign strands of DNA from Hella Kitty. This pink fleshed apple is tart from all the sour candies she ate and the energetic signature of her spirit, but sweet underneath from what remained of that sweet innocent kitty caught in the cross fire of human foolishness. You can grow this delicious apple and enjoy it in tribute to her story. Just be warned that it is said that every one in thousands of people may turn pink when they eat it. Thus the new eat a Hella Kitty and see-if-you-turn-pink dare on social media and the occasional pink person wandering around.

The moral of the story? Don’t trust the Government obviously. And let kids be who they are instead of trying to make them about what adults want them to be. Honor the magic of childhood. Nature will not be denied. It is suppressed, it will express in destructive ways. And abide by the golden rule of our age, don’t be a dick.

This apple can be a truly eye popping shade of pink. It has to be seen to be appreciated. I mean, like it is made in a lab, a bright girly pink of a shade that I’m not sure I have exactly seen in other red fleshed apples. The color is usually mottled with white but sometimes solid. That may change as it matures more and is likely to vary year to year and by climate.

Fruits are a beautiful shade of pink to red, slightly flattened, pretty uniform in size and overall very nice to look at. The foliage is weirdly very light green in the growing season, turning yellow in he fall. As to other growing habits and disease resistance, it is too early to tell. The fully ripe season seems to be around late November, to early December here. Depending on just how much sourness a person likes, it can be eaten much earlier making it a pretty long season for fresh eating. The size if thinned well will run toward medium/small, but not really crab sized. Productivity seems high so far. Texture is good but it doesn’t hold after they ripen.

Hella Kitty is not a polite apple. Out of my trio of Wickson x Rubaiyat seedlings, Cherub is the angelic polite one, Tomboy is refreshingly tart, but well balanced and easy to get along with, and Hella Kitty is the problem child. It is not low in sugar, it is just high in acid. Flavors run toward berries. As the fruit ripens it becomes more flavorful. There seems to be a hint of Its mother Wickson’s savory flavors, but not much and just in very ripe specimens. The more the fruit can be ripened thoroughly in good condition, the more we are likely to see that flavor component develop.

This is one for those kids (big and little) who like the sour candies, the people that suck on lemons and the green apple eaters. It does mellow somewhat, but not much until it is over ripe. This can be a delicious little apple with the most striking neon color.