If there is a "sweetheart master" in the two-dimensional world, Hello Kitty, the creator of Japan's "kawaii" culture, must be the best choice, and in 2024, the superstar of the Sanrio family, Hello Kitty, will celebrate his 50th birthday.
Half a century since his debut, the faithful followers of "Kitty Gate" have ranged from "Big Miss" Hilton, to rock star Avril, and even gaga, who can bring surprises every time he appears...... There is no "cat slave" that this sweet kitten can't conquer.
Even if you haven't seen an episode of Hello Kitty's animation, it doesn't affect her appearance on the cover of your childhood notebook, on your school bag, on your pencil, on your keychain...... If you haven't had an in-depth understanding of this popular childhood cartoon superstar, you probably can't guess that it's not your fault that you haven't seen her anime, because she really wasn't born in an anime or a series, she doesn't even have any story to back it up with, and the Japanese company Sanrio created her just to make cheap plastic wallets look more expensive and popular.
An international superstar born on plastic wallets
Founded in 1960, Sanrio has created more than 450 cartoon characters under the business philosophy of "Small Gift Big Smile", and has formed a variety of business segments such as gift product planning and sales, IP operation, licensing business, and theme parks.
Sanrio's founder, Nobutaro Tsuji, who sold silk and ran a rubber sandal business, was very fond of adding small designs to his products to increase sales. He found that if he added a flower to his shoe, he could sell it at a higher price. Therefore, he adds a little design to the product every time to make the otherwise cheap items more expensive.
At that time, Sanrio was about to launch a plastic pouch and wanted to design a new character to increase the audience for the product.
At the beginning of the design, the designer Yuko Shimizu thought that the most popular animals for children were bears, puppies and kittens, and since the first two had been launched by other companies, she designed a cute cat girl with a bow on her ears based on cats.
Although Shintaro was not particularly happy with the design at the time, it is amazing that this bow girl with an amazingly huge head circumference became an instant hit, and in the following 50 years, it became a world-class brand comparable to Barbie, Winnie the Pooh, and Mickey Mouse.
"To be honest, when I first saw that picture, I just didn't think it was too bad. I didn't expect it to be Sanrio's most popular star. In the book "The Secret of Hello Kitty," co-authored by American business journalist Ken Belson and Brian Bryner, Shintaro Tsuji said.
Maybe you haven't noticed that the Hello Kitty you see now is very different from the original Hello Kitty in appearance, after three generations of designers, in order to get more people's love, both in face and body, Hello Kitty has undergone explosive changes.
The original Hello Kitty designed by Yuko Shimizu in 1974 had an oval face, a less round chin, pointed ears, a longer beard, and most importantly, she was just a seated cat girl at the beginning of her birth.
In order to make Kitty look even more cute, the second-generation designer Setsuko Yonewa created the famous standing pose while inheriting the original design concept, which was an instant hit and the Kitty universe was further developed.
The current Hello Kitty designer is Yuko Yamaguchi, who has taken over Kitty's design since 1980, and most of the Hello Kitty we see are designed by her, she made Kitty's face rounder and added some vivid personality descriptions to make Kitty more cute.
London girl born in Japan
Although Hello Kitty was born as a cartoon character without any story, anime or comics, she has a rather specific and strange setting.
Kitty's full name is Kitty White, a little British girl born in the suburbs of London, Scorpio, blood type A, 5 apples tall, 3 apples heavy, her favorite food is apple pie made by her mother, she is always in the third grade of primary school, and she has to take three school buses from home to school......
A Japanese company set their brand IP image as a British little girl, the reason for which can be traced back to the 70s when Hello Kitty was born, Japan's economy took off, and the whole people yearned for the British lifestyle.
As a cartoon character born for marketing, her background needs to cater to the needs of the current market, with her dad George with a pipe in her mouth and her mom a former piano teacher and now a housewife who loves to bake. The family lives in a villa on the outskirts of London......
All the settings are almost a sample of "dream life" for Japanese families at the time.
Since its birth, Hello Kitty has quickly become popular around the world with her unique charm, and it is a phenomenal IP that is difficult to replicate until today.
She has been featured in more than 50,000 products in every field imaginable, generated more than $80 billion in revenue for the company over the past 50 years, and continues to generate $7, $5.9 billion a year for Sanrio today. On the global IP list, she is second only to Pokémon, Disney's famous Mickey Mouse is only in fourth place, and the Star Wars series is fifth.
It is worth mentioning that on this "Forbes" list of cartoon characters, only Hello Kitty did not rely on any animation, comics or series to debut.
In the decades since her debut, Sanrio, the company that created Hello Kitty, has never bought an advertisement for her, and just by word of mouth, she has grown from a cute cat girl on a cheap plastic purse to Asia's number one cash cow and a cultural phenomenon on a global scale.
One of the most famous cats in the world, she is not a cat
As one of the most famous cats in the world, she is not even a real cat, and even after 50 years, there are still many people who cannot accept the fact that Kitty is not actually a cat, but a "little British girl".
This controversial topic was even reported by the Los Angeles Times, where Christina Kawayano, a professor at the University of Hawaii, gave a lecture on her research topic Hello Kitty at the Japanese American Museum in Los Angeles. As a result, when the draft was submitted to Sanrio, the registrar of Hello Kitty's image, it was pointed out that this statement was wrong.
After the lecture, Kawayano received a call from Sanrio, and Sanrio also issued a special statement for this purpose, saying that Hello Kitty is not a cat, but a little girl. In order to prove that Hello Kitty is a little human girl, the official also deliberately gave a reason: she has never appeared on all fours, whether she is sitting or walking, she has a human posture.
Hello Kitty is not a cat, but a cat slave, and since 2004 she has had a white Persian cat named Charmmy, a gift from her father, with Kitty's treasure chest key around her neck, lace trimmed bows on her ears that are more delicate than the protagonist herself, and her cat is said to have a sister named Honey Cute......
She doesn't have a mouth? No, she does
Some people will say that Hello Kitty with two eyes and one mouth is the essence of Japanese minimalist design, but what you don't know is that maybe she is even more minimalist than you think, because she doesn't even have a mouth.
According to the memories of Yuko Shimizu, the first designer of Hello Kitty, the cartoon images that had appeared on the market at that time, whether it was a dog or a bear, were too specific, and the design without a mouth was to give Kitty more room for imagination and allow people to project their emotions onto Kitty.
"If you're happy, you'll find that Kitty is happy too, and if you're in a bad mood, Kitty seems a little melancholy. It's easy to think of her as an intimate partner. ”
Although the original intention of the design sounded reasonable, in order to allow Kitty to go further, the subsequent series created for her completely abandoned the "no mouth" setting, which was strongly criticized by the "Kittygate" faithful at the time.
Since the appearance of Hello Kitty does not rely on any works, at best it can only be the mascot of the gift company, so after becoming popular, Sanrio hopes to make Hello Kitty more vivid through the series.
To this end, they even teamed up with MGM in the United States to launch "Hello Kitty's Furry Tale Theater", which aired on CBS TV, and each episode parodies a classic fairy tale, Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty...... It's as if there is no heroine in this world who Sanrio can't hold up.
With the intervention of MGM, Kitty's strong American comic style gradually lost her original style, and the momentum of entering Europe and the United States did not make much splash, and even the number of fans in Japan gradually decreased. In the end, "Hello Kitty's Furry Tale Theater" came to an abrupt end after only 13 episodes.
In 1993, the new animated series "Hello Kitty and Friends" directed by Shintaro Tsuji himself debuted, which is based on the life of Kitty and her friends, and also added Kitty's troubles and friends to overcome the Japanese-style plot of the plot, which completely established the status of Hello Kitty Sanrio's first sister. At the same time, Kitty also appeared frequently in a series of anime developed by Sanrio.
同猫不同命
In serious contrast to Kitty's explosion is her sister Mimmy, and her sister Kitty's personality is bright and confident, but unlike her sister Mimmy, she is a complete otaku, very shy to strangers, and only likes to do crafts at home, in addition, the appearance of the two sisters is almost identical, except that Kitty's red bow is in the right ear, and Mimmy's yellow bow is in the left ear, it is said that this design is just to let the mother distinguish between the two.
But there is a slight difference, fifty years later, my sister almost "found no such person", but Kitty has become the spokesperson of Japan's "kawaii" culture, and the same cat is probably the twins.
Although Kitty has been favored by generations of girls for her unchanging "kawaii" temperament for the past 50 years, it is undeniable that "Sweetheart" will also experience a midlife crisis.
In Sanrio's 2020 most popular IP selection results, Hello Kitty, who has been at the top of the list all year round, only ranked fifth, in order to revive Kitty's former glory, Sanrio even opened a theme park for Kitty to benchmark Disney, Sanrio Puroland, but unfortunately it has been losing money since it opened, and the media can't help but question: Is Hello Kitty too old to be middle-aged?
But no matter what, this cat girl who can't open her mouth to speak is an irreplaceable memory and feeling for fans who will still celebrate her birthday 50 years later.
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World Book Day Recommendation 001
作者：Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
Tell the story of the rare matsutake supply chain. In fieldwork spanning Tokyo and Kyoto in Japan, Oregon in the United States, Yunnan in China, and Lapland in Finland, the author follows a little-known commodity supply chain to present the "identity translation" of rare matsutake mushrooms step by step: quietly breaking through the soil in abandoned industrial forests, being collected by Yao, Miao and Southeast Asian pickers who have escaped into the mountains and forests in search of freedom, and then accumulating layers of value into Japan through the fiercely bidding market for value-preserving tickets, and turning them into gifts with strong symbols.