But in reality, it's the final phase of their worldwide plan to drive every teenage girl on the planet mad with puppy love.

The place: the Virgin Megastore in Times Square. It's packed by the advance guard of the group's emerging following -- girls able to sniff the scent of Major Cute Boys from the flimsiest of evidence: a few pictures of the group peppering teen magazines, a smidgen of radio play from Z-100 for their first single and the faint screams of foreign girls echoing down from Canada, where the group already rules.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!" gasps 12-year old Kim Caroli of Bayonne, NJ. "I'm so excited, I'm going to die!"

Maybe we all are -- but not for the reason she thinks. A massive crush of pigtailed, yelping girls -- and me! -- press toward the store's fourth-floor pexiglass barrier, threatening to burst through and plunge everybody 100 feet down. Luckily, Virgin and the band's bodyguards thought to employ more security people than normally shield the President -- and a lemminglike descent into mass death is averted.

All is calm...

Until the Boys themselves show up to sing even-flatter-than-you'd-expect vocals to some better-than-you'd-think, pre-taped musical tracks. It isn't one of their better performances -- not that any of their fans notice -- but it's greeted ith such hysterical shrieking that every eardrum in new-and-improved Times Square is in peril.

And that was just the beginning!

In the 10 months since this key moment in pop, the Backstreet Boys' brand of bubblegum R&B, as played on their debut LP, has ousold the Spice Girls' second album by about 700,000 copies -- but without equivalent media hysteria. By moving 3.6 million platters, "The Backstreet Boys" has become the third-biggest album of the year so far, after the "Titanic" soundtrack and Celine Dion's "Let's Talk About Love." The Boys also scored three Top Five hits: "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)," "As Long As You Love Me" and "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)."

Likewise, the Boys' concert tour this summer has moved more tickets in the New York area than the Spice Girls' infinitely more-hyped shows, with 42,000 tickets sold to the Girls' 35,000. And the week their home video came out, the Boys sold twice as many as the Girls did with theirs.

But does the mainstream press take notice? Hardly. Could it be sexism on the part of male editors, favoring busty girls to beefy boys? The Backstreet kids are too polite, or too well coached, to complain about the Girls' fame. In fact, they say they prefer their relatively low-key road to success.

"I think it's kinda cool, our way," says 18-year old Nick Carter, the blondest, youngest, girliest -- and therefore, most popular -- member of the fivesome. "This is like an underground thing, sneaking up on you. When the Spice Girls came over, it was like, boom! Big single, TV, everything."

Kevin Richardson, 26, the long-haired and most serious Boy, feels their quieter attack could well prove a commercial advantage. "When you're in the limelight and everyone's talking about you every day, they get sick of you. We don't want to oversaturate ourselves."

"We're more mysterious," adds Alexander James "A.J." McLean, 21, the group's designated wildman, sex machine and quasi-home Boy. "We're not trying to be one of those super-merchandised groups. We may have the occasional key chain on the market, but not dolls and pillows."

In fact, the group do have pillows, up for sale right on the back cover of their LP -- "100% cotton, poly-filled, approximately [13-inch] square, $12.98" -- along with 10 kinds of T-shirts, hats, bandannas, key chains and nearly a dozen posters with group and individual shots, suitable for framing.

It shouldn't come as a surprise. After all, the Boys learned from the teen-sales masters. Though they're shy about the connection, the band is managed by some of the same predecessors, New Kids on the Block.

While the Boys started out on their own in their native Orlando, Fla., they came to prominence thanks to Johnny Wright. For four years, he was the New Kids' road manager, and had learned how to shape a teen act from the Kids' guru, promoter Maurice Starr.

The band started in 1993 when Howie Dorough, 24, (alias Howie D. or Sweet D) met Nick and AJ while they were all trying out for a local Florida kids-TV show. Kevin and his well-chiseled cousin, 22-year old Brian "B-Rok" Littrell, came on board later. Together, the fivesome idolized R&B vocal-harmony acts like Boyz II Men, although their talents brought them closer to chirpy New Kids turf -- meaning Wright had the, er, right stuff to be their Svengali.

Unfortunately for them, in the mid-90s, no one in this country wanted to know from a teen-pop group. Angst and brutality ruled the music world. Between the angry alterna-rock of Nirvana and the mean-spirited rapping of Snoop Doggy Dog, few saw the need for a dreamy pop/R&B act for kids. "Radio didn't pick up on us at all," remembers Kevin.

While the group did manage to land a record deal with Jive, the label wisely decided to seed the group in Europe first. Overseas, scores of mostly British cute-boy groups had been hitting it big. "So we packed our bags and headed over," Kevin recalls.

They also cut an album featuring some surprisingly strong R&B pop songs crafted by outside pros. (Unlike the Spice Girls, the Boys don't even try to contribute to the writing.) Soon, the band had become a hit in countries like Germany, Holland and England, where their singles took off in '96 and '97. Did it bother them that back home, they went over about as well as Marilyn Manson at a Young Republicans convention?

Says Nick: "We wanted to show all our friends and family back home how well we were doing, but all we could do was tell them or show them videos."

In the meantime, the group got to fine-tune its stage show, figuring out just the right moves to wow the average Barbie fan. They also had time to sit things out before a sea change took place in American music. After the suicide of Kurt Cobain and the murder of Tupac Shakur in late '96, audiences moved away from confrontational music. At the start of '97, radio began favoring more clean-cut pop, while a new audience emerged reflecting the so-called echo boom (comprising the new-teen progeny of baby boomers born after 1982). With 52.2 million children crowding classrooms, junior highs and high schools started to become standing-room only affairs. Buoyed by population figures promising more teens in the next 10 years than in the last 25, new youth magazines sprang up both to milk, and promote, the growing market, from Teen People to Twist.

Musically, the new market helped groups like the Spice Girls (in February '97), Hanson (in May) and the Backstreet Boys (by last fall). But while the Spice Girls came on like inspirational older sisters, and Hanson like eye-level peers, the Boys made smart use of their greater maturity, adding a bit more late-teen sex to the mix. In their video for "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)," the group apeared with alluringly unbuttoned shirts, flashing glistening wet, marbled chests. "I was a little leery of that," Kevin confesses. "In Europe that was our fourth single. In America, it was our first, so that's the first impression people got of us. We didn't want to be pigeonholed as just beefcake." Earth to Kevin: Sex sells -- even to very young girls. At least nowadays.

Beginning with that video and song, the group got a titanic reaction, enough to change their lives forever -- or at least for the next few years. Fans started turning up everywhere. "Sometimes it's a little scary," AJ admits. "The fans can lose control. They don't realize what they're doing, and then people can get hurt. They rip your earrings out or pull your hair. Luckily, I don't have much hair for them to pull out."

It nearly ended in tragedy in Toronto. "I got my foot run over by a car," says AJ. "That scared me a lot, to know that if I had fallen down my whole body would have been run over."

It's not just the fans who give them trouble. Nick won't elaborate, but he hints at a frustrating encounter with arch-competitor Hanson.

"One time we did a show with them," Nick begins. "I don't know whether they were busy or whatever but, well, I was brought up to be nice to everyone."

Normally, that's required behavior for teen idols. Accordingly, the Boys always present themselves as polite and accessible, both in interviews and with their fans. They're always careful to tell the fan mags that what they really look for in a girl is a kind heart and a good personality. "I think I'm a very apporachable person," Nick says. "Anyone can come and talk to me."

Kevin goes even further with the nice-guy routine. "I wouldn't say no to [dating] a fan. You never know who you're going to meet."

And yet -- get this -- the boys say they have a tough time with dates!

"It's going to be tough finding the girl of my dreams," worries AJ. "I'm trying to find somebody who can put up with my schedule. Not many can."

No doubt, such complaints only further endear the Boys to their girls. Even their medical problems have worked in their favor. Just over a year ago, Brian's heart began leaking blood. He'd had a murmur since childhood and his heart became enlarged. Perfect! The Backstreet Boy with too big a heart!

Five weeks ago, he had surgery and, according to AJ, their fan mail ballooned. "We all get a lot more mail now," he says. "I guess the girls are getting a little nervous. They've even asked me, 'How are you? Are you feeling fatigued?' But Brian looks even better now than he did before."

In fact, his surgery gave the Boys their first excuse for a vacation since they hit the road three years ago. But this could also be their last break for a good long while. Even the 15 minutes of fame granted a teen idol take a few years to elapse in real time. And the Boys have every intention of extending their fame-span. They aim to evolve their music for an older audience, and point to an act like New Edition, which made the rare leap from screamybop to an adult act. Kevin also makes sure to point out that the act's singles have enjoyed their longest play on adult contemporary radio.

Even if they never do make the jump to being a grownup act, Kevin says he'll be satisfied. "I don't mind being considered a teen idol at all. It's an honor."

At the very least, it's definitely something worth screaming about.

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