The owner saw it one August morning and couldn’t believe it.
Masanao Itaya has a shop in Nagahama, in Japan’s Shiga Prefecture, where a decade ago he hung a giant sign featuring the face of a smiling baby advertising special offers. Cute, harmless, nothing special. Until the Japanese summer did its thing: the extreme heat literally began melting the ink in the advertisement, and the baby’s eyes and mouth transformed into black holes that look like they came straight out of a horror movie.
The funniest part is what Itaya did when he noticed it: nothing. Since it coincided with the Obon season, he decided to leave it as it was, convinced that people would enjoy it as a kind of free summer horror attraction. And he was right: today it’s what customers comment on most among his 70,000 products, and every summer half the internet checks how the baby is aging (badly). 👶🔥
