NCS
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She weighs three apples and stands 5 apples tall. She enjoys baking cookies and desires of being a pianist or poet. And now, regardless of her ageless look, she is 50 years previous.
Friday marks half a century since Japanese merchandising firm Sanrio created the primary iteration of Kitty White, or Hello Kitty, a cheerful feline woman (not, as her creator controversially revealed in 2014, a cat) who lives along with her household in London’s suburbs. In the many years since debuting, she has change into a UNICEF ambassador, a particular envoy for Japan’s Foreign Ministry and the topic of themed eating places, cafes, two amusement parks and even a maternity hospital.
Meet the Hello Kitty superfan with 10,000 toys
As such, Hello Kitty can also be a business behemoth that has earned her creator an estimated $80 billion, putting her alongside Pokémon, Mickey Mouse and Winnie-the-Pooh as historical past’s top-grossing franchises. Unlike others on the listing, nevertheless, merchandise wasn’t a worthwhile extension of Hello Kitty’s on-screen reputation — it was her raison d’être from the beginning.
Designed to adorn kids’s objects and stationery, she was first drawn by Yuko Shimizu, considered one of Sanrio’s in-house illustrators, in 1974. The firm wished designs embodying “kawaii,” a Japanese time period for cuteness, and the 24-year-old’s cat-like creation was inspired by a kitten her father had given her as a present. Hello Kitty made her business debut the following yr, showing on a line of vinyl coin purses alongside a number of different new characters.
She proved, by far, to be the corporate’s hottest new design. Sanrio’s gross sales soared nearly instantly as her picture was pasted onto toys, stickers and far else. But if the character’s early success might be attributed to Shimizu’s easy, memorable design — comprising a mouthless face, oval yellow nostril, whiskers and a bow — her standing as a popular culture icon is because of illustrator Yuko Yamaguchi.
Considered Hello Kitty’s third designer (Shimizu left Sanrio three years after inventing the character and was changed by Setsuko Yonekubo, who briefly oversaw the design within the late Nineteen Seventies) Yamaguchi has steered the character’s visible id for nearly 45 years. Speaking to NCS at Sanrio’s Tokyo headquarters, she recalled becoming a member of the corporate at a time when Hello Kitty merchandise have been declining in reputation.
In 1979, Sanrio determined to revitalize the model, and Yamaguchi was considered one of a number of illustrators tasked with creating and presenting new imagery. Aware that Hello Kitty was an aspiring musician, she drew a scene envisaging the character surrounded by her household after receiving her first grand piano.
“Even though Hello Kitty says she wants to be a pianist, she had never been depicted playing the piano,” she stated, including: “I was asked to be the designer of Hello Kitty on the spot.”
Yamaguchi began assembly with Hello Kitty’s followers, previous and current, to grasp why gross sales have been down. She additionally made a formative year-long go to to San Francisco in 1984, amid a booming US curiosity in teddy bears. After returning to Japan, Yamaguchi started creating new drawings and a forged of mates for Hello Kitty — together with the teddy bear, Tiny Chum.
“I wanted Hello Kitty to become more energetic,” she stated. “And since she was the face of Sanrio, and was born as a symbol of friendship, I wanted to make lots of friends for her.”
While Hello Kitty’s key options remained largely unchanged, Yamaguchi (who beforehand informed Time magazine that the character doesn’t have a mouth “so that people who look at her can project their own feelings onto her face”) positioned her in several eventualities, broadening her attraction.
“She’s good at sports, and she looks cute and chic too,” she defined. “I think of her as a blank canvas that you can transform into all sorts of things. There’s not much that doesn’t suit her… I think that when everyone talks to Hello Kitty, she probably answers them in some way.”
Sales of Hello Kitty merchandise flourished in Japan between the Eighties and mid-Nineties. Much of the corporate’s earlier merchandise was aimed at younger ladies, together with college provides and private care objects like toothbrushes. But, even then, illustrator Yamaguchi knew the character would wish to evolve and develop along with her followers.
It’s a realization the illustrator traces again to a letter she obtained from a fan in 1987: “She was a big fan of Hello Kitty but, in the letter, she wrote that her friends and parents had told her that it is a children’s character, and that she should have outgrown it. But she didn’t want to, so she asked me to make products for high school students like her.”
Inspired by the developments she noticed in Tokyo’s Harajuku fashion district at the time, Yamaguchi started incorporating up to date fashion into her designs, within the hope of interesting to older followers. In 1999, Sanrio informed the New York Times that the character was showing on 12,000 new product traces a yr, spanning nearly each class possible, from clothes to board video games, greeting playing cards to lunchboxes. The firm additionally started utilizing Hello Kitty on extra grownup objects, like electronics and kitchen home equipment, because it grew to become clear that nostalgia was turning into a significant promoting level.
As a end result, a few of right now’s largest Hello Kitty followers are those that grew up along with her within the Eighties and ‘90s. Among them is Asako Kanda, who started collecting Sanrio products in third grade and now owns over 10,000 items adorned with the character’s expressionless face.
“My mother gave me Hello Kitty stationery and school supplies like pencil cases and plastic boards. When I saw them, I thought they were so cute, and they quickly became my favorite. That’s where it started,” she stated, displaying NCS round a devoted Hello Kitty room in her Tokyo dwelling. “Once I started shopping for issues for myself, I may get objects for the kitchen, toilet and different every day requirements. I wished to unify every little thing with Hello Kitty from that time on.
After greater than 36 years of gathering, Kanda nonetheless buys round two Hello Kitty objects each month. Sanrio releases new merchandise on a weekly foundation, and he or she scans them searching for something that’s “memorable or cute.”
“As life goes on, there are times when you face unpleasant or sad experiences,” she stated, “During those times, looking at Hello Kitty goods have brought me comfort and solace.”
As Japan’s economic system stagnated within the Nineties, Sanrio expanded its worldwide presence. In Hello Kitty’s early years, the corporate had offered merchandise door-to-door within the US, earlier than establishing the primary abroad department of its retail retailer, Gift Gate, in San Jose in 1976. But following an explosion of Western curiosity in Japanese tradition — from “Dragon Ball Z” to Tamagotchis and Beyblade — she captured the creativeness of American shoppers across the flip of the millennium, in accordance with Atsuo Nakayama, a Japanese sociologist specializing within the leisure trade.
“Just after 9/11, the world was changing,” he informed NCS. “And I think that the Japanese ‘kawaii’ culture was an alternative fit for America, somehow.”
Much of Hello Kitty’s business success has been achieved by means of licensing. She has spawned books, video video games and animated TV sequence, just like the long-running “Hello Kitty and Friends,” which helped additional develop her character. (Although, regardless of being raised in London, she was given a North American accent in English dubbed variations.) She has additionally been a part of offers with main client and luxurious manufacturers, and has appeared on an EVA Air airplane, Fender Stratocaster guitars and Swarovski jewellery.
And whereas Sanrio’s declining fortunes at the flip of the 2010s sparked fears that Hello Kitty’s cultural relevance was fading, the corporate’s share worth has rocketed within the final two years. It now stands over 10 instances its Covid-era low. According to Atsuo, nostalgia is as soon as once more a key driving power — at dwelling in Japan, and overseas.
“Hello Kitty is on the rise again in America, and I think that this is because the first generation have now become parents and passed (their interests) on to their children,” Atsuo stated, including: “(Her popularity) has risen and fallen many times like this, and it creates a regular opportunity for people who were captivated by Hello Kitty to remember it and want to collect it again.”
Sanrio’s current successes are additionally, partially, on account of it diversifying away from Hello Kitty. The character now solely accounts for round 30% of Sanrio’s gross revenue in product gross sales and licensing, down from 76% a decade earlier, in accordance with the Wall Street Journal. Recent creations like Gudetama (a lazy egg yolk) and Aggressive Retsuko (an introverted death-metal-loving pink panda) have each featured in their very own Netflix sequence.
Yet, whilst Sanrio’s enterprise mannequin modifications, Yamaguchi believes Hello Kitty will endure.
“Of course, there are many characters in the world that have been around longer than Hello Kitty,” the illustrator stated, including: “I hope she continues working hard so she can celebrate her 100th anniversary in 50 years’ time.”