The Consumer Electronics Show is normally full of gimmicky, colorful products and gadgets that are geared toward catching the eyes of thousands of conference attendees. A perfect example of this type of product is none other than the Hello Kitty laptop by NEC, which was on display Saturday night at the conference’s opening press event, CES Unveiled.

The laptop was on display courtesy of AMD (which supplies the laptops processor). For those that aren’t familiar with Hello Kitty, well, consider yourself lucky. But for those that are interested in learning more, I guess I should provide some background. Hello Kitty is a famous character created by Japanese company Sanrio in 1974. The feline character was hugely popular in Asia but lately Hello Kitty has also become a phenomenon in the Western hemisphere. How or why this happened has become the subject of much debate over the years, but one contributing factor is likely the surprising number of female celebrities sporting Hello Kitty fashion products, apparently intent on creating a disastrous trend.

The Hello Kitty laptop itself is a true spectacle. Even in the crowded confines of CES Unveiled where dozens of other products were competing for attention, the laptop stood out. And how could it not? The model, which was designed with the help of Sanrio, features a pink color with nearly 300 Swarovski crystals encrusted on the exterior in the shape of four hearts and, of course, a giant Hello Kitty head. The NEC LaVie G laptop also comes with an AMD Mobile Sempron 3400+ processor, Windows Vista, 1 GB of RAM, a 100GB hard drive, and more. Of course, the laptop looks more like a jewelry box, but what did we expect? It’s Hello freakin’ Kitty!

Oddly enough, AMD had the Hello Kitty laptop in display next to the One Laptop Per Child XO laptop. That got me thinking that perhaps there will be one Hello Kitty laptop per teenage girl and female celebrity, which is a little scary. NEC and AMD haven’t released any sales numbers yet for the Hello Kitty laptop yet; the model is available only through the Internet for approximately $1,650. The limited availability of the product should stave off Hello Kitty’s world domination plan - for now, at least.