Wheeled Wonders

Empowerment. Strength. Camaraderie. Excitement. Adventure.

When Hilo resident Kim Gitzel ticks off these words, she’s talking about roller derby: Gitzel was part of the Paradise Roller Girls travel team for years before shifting focus to her acupuncture business two years ago.

But with those five words, she could just as easily be describing her newest venture: an all-girls superhero brand called Sirenz of Truth: The Wheeled Warriors.

It started when Gitzel’s daughter, Grace, now 6, was a toddler and received a new doll as a gift. Gitzel remembers looking at the doll and thinking that, while it was cute, it could be so much more.

“I was not happy with the options out there,” she said.

She wanted a doll for Grace that represented real girls: girls who didn’t have Barbie-like physiques, who were hard workers with goofy streaks, who were strong team players like Gitzel’s roller derby friends. But there didn’t seem to be one of those dolls on the market, so Gitzel decided she would make her own.

“Life happened, and attentions got segued,” she said of that project.

But this year, life happened in a different way. A mutual friend connected Gitzel with Caryl Liebmann, a toy industry veteran who has handled everything from retail and brand development for Pokemon to licensing for Cabbage Patch Dolls and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Liebmann had recently moved to Hawaii to take a break from the working world, but is now Gitzel’s agent and working full time to help develop Sirenz of Truth. She told the Tribune-Herald this week that she recognized a winner when she saw it.

“The doll really wasn’t what hit me,” Liebmann said. “It was the idea that she had; it was just a great concept.” She gave Gitzel an assignment: Take the general concept and make a story. Every superhero needs a good story behind her.

Gitzel brainstormed for a couple months (with help from Grace), taking advantage of the quiet “moments between moments” she experienced while in the acupuncture clinic to develop a story for Sirenz of Truth.

There would be roller derby, of course. There would be five principal characters, to correspond to the five elements of Chinese medicine, each with a superpower (activated by her roller skates). There would be a mentor figure, based on Gitzel’s own acupuncture teacher from Kona. There would be evil to battle, and truths to discover.

“I feel like the girls we’ve created are aspirational,” Gitzel said.

The story takes place in Hilo, and it’s no surprise that the girls represent Hawaii’s ethnic diversity. They are Caucasian, Polynesian, hapa Chinese, hapa African-American, and Latina. They have funky haircuts. They’re athletes, each with her own body type.

“That’s what we see every day,” Gitzel said. “They all work together as a team to get through the challenges … they have to use their brains to figure out what they need.”

Female superheros are becoming a trend in the licensing world, Liebmann said, as brands from the ‘90s like PowerPuff Girls are revived. Earlier this year, Liebmann and Gitzel visited a licensing trade show on the mainland. There, Liebmann said, “you get a feel for what’s coming down the pipeline in the next three to five years.”

“I, in my heart, really believe this is going to become super successful,” she said. “There’s no brand out there that’s doing what we’re doing. I think Kim’s idea came out at the right time.”

Liebmann came up with the Wheeled Warriors moniker while trying to figure out the best way to “represent what the girls stand for in two, three words.”

“It’s pretty crazy how we just jumped right on,” she said. “I’ve never worked on a brand from scratch like this where I’ve been partnered with the person to be involved in every single aspect.”

Gitzel and Liebmann are now working on the creation of an animated TV show to kickstart Sirenz of Truth. They created an Indiegogo campaign, hired a scriptwriter, and teamed with an artist to design the characters.

Later this month, the pair will attend HawaiiCon, where they will have a special panel just for Sirenz of Truth. Gitzel also will sit in on a panel for indie comic writers. Roller derby teammates will drop by, dressed as the Wheeled Warriors. Gitzel and Grace have special cosplay outfits a seamstress friend made.

“It’s a way to reach out to the local community and get them involved,” Liebmann said. “We wanted to take every advantage of that.”

Gitzel hopes that HawaiiCon will be a chance to get the word out about her own project, but also to encourage others to develop ideas on their own.

“The thing I know about this island is (it’s) so full of creativity,” she said.

Email Ivy Ashe at iashe@hawaiitribune-herald.com.