At Los Angeles kid birthday parties, ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ rule

For her 6th birthday party in January, Amy Tzagournis’ daughter Hazel wanted special guests: the characters from “KPop Demon Hunters.” Six months prior, while Tzagournis was out of town, her daughter and 4-year-old son had become obsessed.

“I came back and all of a sudden they knew every word to the songs,” she says with disbelief. “I was like, ‘Where did this come from?’ It was literally out of nowhere.”

So Tzagournis, of Redondo Beach, hired Funky Divas & Dudes, one of the many characters-for-hire companies in the Los Angeles area that had started to offer “KPop Demon Hunters”-inspired performers. At her birthday party, Hazel and her friends danced to songs from the movie, including “Golden” and “Soda Pop,” alongside the entertainers.

“We’ve pretty much been doing nothing but ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ parties,” Dana Marie Lazzareschi, one of the co-owners of Funky Divas & Dudes, says. “Every party we’re doing has been ‘KPop.’ It’s insane. We’ve had one party that was Broadway-themed and another that was tropical-themed, but other than that, it’s all been ‘KPop’ every single weekend. Sometimes we have five ‘KPop’ parties in one day.”

Released last June, “KPop Demon Hunters” is a bona fide global sensation, a status that not even Netflix, its distributor, anticipated. By August, when Tzagournis’ daughter first saw it at a friend’s house, the movie about three glamorous K-pop stars doubling as brave warriors to defeat nefarious demons had become Netflix’s most-watched movie ever. And in March, the musical picked up two Academy Awards, one for best animated feature and another for best original song for “Golden,” an empowering anthem turned chart-topping hit.

Nearly half of all of the birthday parties Tzagournis has taken her kids to in the last six months featured some “KPop Demon Hunters” element, whether just the theme or performers (for her daughter’s party, she hired all three demon hunters and a Saja Boy). The parties are so frequent that parents are even sharing decorations to reduce costs, she says.

The party included Saja Boys-themed party favor bags and “VIP” passes for guests.

“One of my daughter’s good friends had a party two weeks before hers and we basically recycled all the ‘KPop’ decorations for her,” Tzagournis says, laughing. “We used theirs and then I passed them off to another mom. These ‘KPop’ decorations for the birthday party got recycled at least two or three times.”

Operating since 2002, Funky Divas & Dudes, like most of these party businesses, offers princesses, superheroes and other pop culture-inspired characters. For a long time, Elsa, the Snow Queen from Disney’s “Frozen” franchise, ruled over little girls’ parties. “We joke that it’s a generational thing, every 10 years a girl with a braid shows up and takes over every kid’s birthday party playlist. There was Elsa back in the day, and now there’s Rumi,” Lazzareschi says, referring to the main heroine in “KPop Demon Hunters.”

The displacement of “Frozen” was also evident to Tzagournis. “The year before, when my daughter was almost 5, everyone was dressed up like Elsa. There were like five Elsas in her class at Halloween,” she recalls. “And this past year, more than 50% of the girls around her age were one of the ‘KPop’ characters.”

Aside from party entertainment, Funky Divas & Dudes also hosts extracurricular dance classes at L.A.-area schools, including the one Tzagournis’ daughter attends. Lazzareschi realized the popularity of the movie when children started requesting “Golden” and other songs from the soundtrack during dance classes. While “Frozen,” she thinks, was geared toward younger audiences, “KPop Demon Hunters” has a broader appeal. “It’s very attractive to all ages, not just the little kindergartners and first graders, but all the way up to third, fourth, fifth graders,” Lazzareschi says. “There are just so many different aspects, like the martial arts, and kids just love that stuff, boys and girls.”

Companies like Funky Dudes & Divas had to quickly meet the demand for the “KPop” characters at L.A. kids’ parties, sourcing costumes from Halloween stores or online retailers. On top of the three demon hunters (Rumi, Mira and Zoey), Lazzareschi also offers male performers resembling the Saja Boys (the rival group in the film) that teach kids breakdancing.

“The whole dance element made it even better than just hanging out with characters,” says Tzagournis.

Madelynn Wheater, 7, left, and Parker Apel, 7, center, show off their best moves in the dance circle.

The “KPop Demon Hunters” theme continued onto the plates and cake at Parker Apel’s party.

For Katherine Diaz of Torrance, the “KPop Demon Hunters” craze has been a welcome lifeboat. Diaz manages her 18-year-old daughter Kiara Asiel and several other teenage girls who perform at birthday parties. Diaz’s operation caters to Latino customers as Asiel (an aspiring dancer who plays Rumi) offers bilingual shows. In the wake of the immigration raids last summer, many of their potential patrons refrained from hosting celebrations, dampening their business. Over the last few months, though, demand for the “KPop” characters has generated new opportunities.

“It has been a boom. We have people in our area calling us saying they wanted our ‘KPop’ show because my daughter speaks Spanish,” Diaz says in Spanish.

In addition to birthday parties, Diaz’s team was recently hired to appear at several McDonald’s restaurants around Los Angeles, where hundreds of children and their parents lined up to take photos. In December, the city of Gardena invited them to perform for the community at a Christmas event.

“They specifically requested the ‘KPop’ girls. We said, ‘But it’s Christmas?!’ and they replied, ‘Yes, but kids are dying to see Huntrix [the phonetic name of the musical group in the movie].’ My girls went dressed in their ‘KPop’ outfits, but I made sure to put little Christmas hats on them.”

To avoid legal repercussions, some of these businesses might offer generic versions of popular characters. In 2017, Disney sued a New York company offering “Star Wars” and “Frozen” character knockoffs at birthday parties, but voluntarily dismissed the case a year later after a judge axed most of its trademark claims. The amount of these companies, not only in L.A. but around the world, might also present “practical difficulties” for copyright holders to take action, says Mark Lee, a partner at corporate law firm Rimon PC who has taught entertainment law at USC.

“To give you an example, I had a client who co-wrote a very famous song,” Lee says. “1.2 million people posted that song on YouTube without authorization. You can send what’s called a DMCA Takedown notice, which is like a cease-and-desist letter to YouTube, but you have to do it 1.2 million times.”

At the same time, these small businesses are helping keep the characters popular.

Eliana Fraser, dressed in a Rumi costume, paints 6-year-old Ariya Taylor’s face at a party for Parker Apel, right.

Both Lazzareschi and Diaz have more “KPop Demon Hunters”-inspired events coming up, but Tzagournis believes the peak of the fad has already passed — at least for now. “I feel like this might be very short-lived, which would differ from ‘Frozen’ and the Disney movies,” Tzagournis says. “The kids are kind of over the ‘KPop’ thing now, but the sequels are probably going to reel them back in.”

A new “KPop Demon Hunters” movie is already in the works.