TFBoys don’t draw the line at endorsing toilet cleaning products
BEIJING: Squeaky-clean pop stars TFBoys don’t mind drumming up sales for toilet cleaning products.
When it comes to commercial endorsements, they’re everywhere – Snickers candy bars to Safeguard soap, Fanta soft drinks and even the stuff you squirt into toilet bowls.
Last week’s big hubbub in China’s entertainment circles was getting a sneak peek at tomorrow’s celebrities auditioning for the notoriously exclusive Beijing Film Academy. But even with the feast of fresh faces available for China’s stargazers, one name stood out from the crowd:
TFBoy band member Wang Junkai.
Simply describing TFBoys as a popular boy band won’t properly explain the massive gravitation pull of their all-encompassing popularity in China. TFBoys is nothing less than a cultural phenomenon.
One agog TFBoys fan was quoted as saying, “I bet many people in the US know about Wang now – isn’t that a new method to disseminate our modern culture?”
Last year, TFBoys showed up for just about every significant cultural event.
These included the Spring Festival Gala, sleeper hit movie Mr. Six, the breakout television drama about Chinese students studying abroad, A Love for Separation and the Zhang Yimou movie The Great Wall.
Individually, TFBoys are Wang Junkai (Karry), Wang Yuan (Roy), and Yiyuan Quanxi (Jackson), three Chinese teenagers with really good bone structure who sing and dance.
They actually look like siblings. Put them together, and the three inspire nothing less than fanatical devotion.
Last September, this reached a new high with TFBoys fans buying advertising in New York City’s Times Square to celebrate Wang’s 17th birthday.
TFBoys fans have also used the likenesses of their idols to adorn buses, airports, and metro stations throughout China, South Korea, Japan, and beyond. No doubt about it – their fans rank among the zaniest in Asia.
But the craziest thing TFBoys fans have done is claiming the Guinness World Record for Most Forwarded Post: 100 million times.