Hello Kitty (ハローキティ, Harō Kitī), also known by her full name, Kitty White (キティ・ホワイト, Kitī Howaito), is a female cat character from the Japanese company Sanrio, created by Yuko Shimizu, and designed by Yuko Yamaguchi. She is the titular main character of the long-running and highly successful Hello Kitty media franchise as well as the mascot of Sanrio. She is also the primary protagonist of the universe named after her. Hello Kitty made her grand debut in 1974 and is one of the company's earliest known characters.
The Design and Characteristics of Hello Kitty
Hello Kitty is an anthropomorphic Japanese Bobtail cat with white fur, a yellow nose, black eyes and 3 whiskers on each side of her head and no visible mouth. In her debut, she only wears overalls with no shirt. Hello Kitty is also seen with striped shirts and different color bows and overalls in various artwork, including pink and purple. She is portrayed as a cute, bright, sweet, pure-hearted and tomboyish girl who can do anything she sets her mind to.
She has many friends such as My Melody (her best friend) and she is very close to her slightly younger identical twin sister Mimmy. Kitty is good at baking although she claims that she is an awful chef in the Hello Kitty and Friends episode "The Wonderful Sisters". She loves her Mama's homemade apple pie. Kitty likes to collect small and cute things. Her favorite subjects in school are English, music and art, and she dreams of becoming a pianist or a poet someday. Her blood type is A. Hello Kitty's trademark signature is the red bow on her left ear. Her birthday is on November 1st.
The reason for Hello Kitty not being shown with a mouth has been stated by Shintaro Tsuji and Sanrio as one of the messages behind her meaning, being that people need to express themselves through actions and not only by words. It is also said that Kitty speaks from the heart and is Sanrio's ambassador to the world, and isn't bound to a particular language.
Hello Kitty has no official age that is consistent throughout most media by Sanrio nor has her exact age ever been stated. Like her friends, Kitty's age varies depending on the media, with her being shown around kindergarten or 1st grade age in OVAs such as Growing Up With Hello Kitty and Hello Kitty's Paradise, while she is between child or teenager age in different fairy tales to fit their respective stories in anime like Hello Kitty and Friends and Hello Kitty's Animation Theater. Later official media shows Hello Kitty likely at adult age in Hello Kitty and Friends Supercute Adventures and Hello Kitty: Super Style!
Read also: Why Choose a Fur Ski Mask?
The Origins of Hello Kitty
In 1962, Shintaro Tsuji, the founder and former president of Sanrio, began selling rubber sandals with flowers painted on them. Tsuji noted the profits gained by adding a cute design to the sandals and hired cartoonists to design cute characters for his merchandise. The company produced a line of character merchandise around gift-giving occasions. Hello Kitty was designed by Yuko Shimizu and was added to the lineup of early Sanrio characters in 1974.
When a front and side drawing of Hello Kitty (then unnamed) was shown by Yuko to several other people in the company, they greatly preferred the side view drawing and praised it. Needless to say, Hello Kitty is the most important creation by Sanrio. Despite having a rather basic appearance by today's standards (which most later mainline Sanrio characters would follow), during her debut in the 1970s, she became a revolutionary hit and due to her instant breakthrough popularity in an era where the kawaii community was at its infancy, even become its image in Japan, taking the world by storm since and is primarily responsible for the company's multi-billiondollar success.
When asked why Hello Kitty is the mascot of Sanrio, Shintaro Tsuji personally stated "I felt that the most important thing in your life is to have someone whom you can open up your heart to and talk about anything; to have many friends whom you can talk with your heart is the most blessed thing in your life. Then I asked myself how can you make friends -- in what way people can make a friend with those people. That is not just to avoid behaving, which makes people uncomfortable. But do something, which makes people happy. In this way people can make friends. For example, when people are ill, you can say something to them, or when people did something for you, you say "thank you" to them. For those kinds of occasions, you send a small present rather than an expensive gift. It is important to show your appreciation since you are able to make good friends in this way. This idea has formed as a business. As a result, Hello Kitty was created. Hello Kitty has become known among everybody and it means that people are becoming friends.
The character's first ever appearance on a product was a vinyl coin purse in Japan released in 1975, which ended up being the hottest selling item that year which came as a surprise to everyone. Its artwork shows Hello Kitty in her iconic side-view sitting position with blue overalls but no shirt, with a bottle of milk and a fish in a bowl on her left and right, respectively. Notably, the original says "Hello!" above, but later reproductions by Sanrio instead says her familiar name.
Evolution and Continued Popularity
When Hello Kitty was introduced in the United States in 1976, a year after her debut in Japan, her popularity continued to boom throughout 1977. However, Yuko Shimizu left in the previous year, as she had gotten married and focused on family in the meantime ever since. Shimizu’s former assistant, Setsuko Yonekubo, oversaw Kitty during the boom years. She introduced incremental innovations like the first portrayal of Hello Kitty in a standing pose, but otherwise made a point of hewing closely to her predecessor’s linework, down to using a photocopied template of Kitty’s face to ensure uniformity. Whether because of this conservative approach or because of the ever-changing whims of young children, the first Kitty fad ran out of steam around 1979.
Read also: The symbolism of the Irish Flag Balaclava explained
For a long while afterwards, Sanrio made no particular effort to replace Hello Kitty's designer. When Tsuji had learned of the team planning to abandon Kitty, he fought to keep her and decided to hold an in-house competition for new concepts for Hello Kitty. The winner was Yuko Yamaguchi, with her whimsical illustration of Hello Kitty sitting at a piano surrounded by an adoring family-a charming visual of a deeper backstory that had previously only been hinted at by Yamaguchi’s predecessors.
Hello Kitty turns 50: Behind the 'Kawaii' icon's enduring appeal
Hello Kitty as a Cultural Ambassador
In May 2008, Japan named Hello Kitty the ambassador of Japanese tourism in both China and Hong Kong, which are two places where the character is exceptionally popular among children and young women. Hello Kitty's popularity began waning in Japan before the year 2000. In 2002, Hello Kitty lost her place as the top-grossing character in Japan in the Character Databank popularity chart and has never recovered.
During the financial crisis of 2007-2010, a poster of a Hello Kitty pre-paid debit card expanded to roughly 1 meter in length was displayed on the floor of the US Senate by Senator Byron Dorgan as a demonstration of extreme methods used by credit companies to attract "children 10 to 14 years of age". For the 50th anniversary of Sanrio (2010), Sanrio and Girl Skateboards collaborated and released skateboards with a Hello Kitty graphic. There is a themed restaurant named Hello Kitty Sweets in Taipei, Taiwan. The Hello Kitty brand rose to greater prominence during the late 1990s.
Hello Kitty Merchandise and Collaborations
Since her debut, Hello Kitty, like many fellow popular Sanrio characters, can easily be found on a wide variety of consumer products ranging from plushies, school supplies to fashion accessories and even food. These products range from everyday items to rare collectibles. As of 2009, Bank of America began offering Hello Kitty-themed checking accounts, where the account holder can get checks and a Visa debit card with Hello Kitty's face on it. 2009 marked the collaboration between apparel and accessory brand Stussy and Hello Kitty. Stussy worked with Hello Kitty on a collection focusing on the Hello Kitty character with Stussy signature graphics.
In Spring 2005, Simmons Jewelry Co. and Sanrio announced a co-branded jewelry licensed partnership. "Kimora Lee Simmons for Hello Kitty" was launched exclusively at Neiman Marcus prices ranging from $300 to $5000, Designed by Kimora Lee Simmons and launched as the initial collection. In Fall 2008, Simmons Jewelry Co. and Sanrio debuted a collection of fine jewelry and watches named "Hello Kitty® by Simmons Jewelry Co." The collection launched with Zales Corporation to further expand the reach of the brand, and it developed accessories to satisfy every Hello Kitty fan. In 2019. Hello Kitty appeared in the Funko Pop toy line.
Read also: Synonyms and Applications of Ski Masks
Hello Kitty in Media
There are also many songs based on Hello Kitty. Hello Kitty was also chosen by AH-Software to become a Vocaloid. The choice was attributed to the fact it was their 50th year anniversary. Numerous video games featuring Hello Kitty have been produced since the release of Sanrio Carnival for the Nintendo Famicom (internationally known as NES) in 1990 and the following year on the Game Boy; however, the majority of these games were never released outside of Japan.
Hello Kitty also has made many cameo appearances in games featuring other Sanrio characters, such as the Keroppi-based Super Famicom (Super NES) game in 1994, Kero Kero Keroppi no Bōken Nikki: Nemureru Mori no Keroleen. In 2015, she made a playable appearance in Nintendo's Wii U game Super Mario Maker of the Super Mario franchise, in the form of a special Mystery Mushroom costume in the "Super Mario Bros." theme exclusively. When the player plays as her (or My Melody, who also appears as a costume) and finishes a level or loses a life, the respective jingles have Hello Kitty effects.
In 2021 and 2023, Hello Kitty and several other popular Sanrio characters made a cameo appearance the Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp mobile game of the Animal Crossing series, again in collaboration by Nintendo with a limited-time Sanrio event called "Pocket Camp X Sanrio", as an available shirt, fan, backpack, and a plush item as well as furniture (with the couch being the rarest), albeit expensive to purchase in-game. However, in the Pocket Camp Complete version, like other exclusive items (Mario, Splatoon, and Eevee from Pokémon), they are unfortunately no longer available and are therefore only seen by players who managed to obtain them beforehand. Despite this, it is recently discovered that they are each still in the game's cod...
The Debate: Is Hello Kitty a Cat?
On August 26, 2014, an article for the Los Angeles Times was published surrounding the then-upcoming Hello Kitty 40th anniversary exhibit scheduled at the Los Angeles Japanese-American National Museum in October. Christine R. Yano, an anthropologist from the University of Hawaii, and author of the book Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek Across the Pacific (which is about Hello Kitty's rise on popularity in and outside of Japan), was preparing texts for the exhibit, where she described Hello Kitty as a cat.
However, many interpreted the statement that Hello Kitty was not a cat in a literal sense, resulting in the idea that Hello Kitty is actually a human girl, with her cat-like features being simply an aesthetic design choice. Supporting this, the name Kitty is actually a real, although passé diminutive for the name Katherine. This would imply that Hello Kitty's full, legal name is Katherine George White. The controversy surrounding the idea of Hello Kitty actually being a human became widespread, to the point that Preston Phro of RocketNews24 (today SoraNews24) called Sanrio's Japanese PR department to ask about the matter.
| Attribute | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | Hello Kitty (Kitty White) |
| Company | Sanrio |
| Designer | Yuko Shimizu (original), Yuko Yamaguchi |
| Debut Year | 1974 |
| Key Features | White fur, yellow nose, black eyes, red bow |
| Personality | Cute, bright, sweet, tomboyish |
-Sanrio PR representative, August 28, 2014, on whether Sanrio's statement to Christine R. "Hello Kitty was done in the motif of a cat. It's going too far to say that Hello Kitty is not a cat. "That [Hello Kitty], is a copy [of Miffy], I think. I don't like that at all.
Hello Kitty Knock-Off Accusations
Supporting his belief, Dick Bruna's company Mercis Media, on his behalf, sued Sanrio directly on August 26th, 2010 over Hello Kitty's friend Cathy, claiming that the character infringed on Miffy's copyright and trademark. Sanrio counter-sued, going as far as attempting to revoke Miffy's trademark rights entirely. Ultimately, following the [[wikipedia:2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami|disastrous March 11th, 2011 earthquake in Japan], both parties settled out of court, donating €150,000 (over 162,000 USD) to relief funds for the 9.0 magnitude earthquake's incredible damage. Sanrio was, from then on, forbidden from using Cathy in any capacity, going as far as editing Cathy out of media which originally featured her in re-releases, making the character officially retired.
Beyond Mercis and Dick Bruna himself, the late veteran American animator Gene Deitch additionally supported the hypothesis that Hello Kitty was a Miffy rip-off. Deitch had been the director of the 1992 animated adaptation of Dick Bruna's books, titled Dick Bruna's Miffy storybook classics, which he had put much time and effort into. "A Japanese company created something called “Hello Kitty,” a blatant copy of Miffy, just with shorter ears and whiskers, and with far less graphic integrity. They’ve flooded the USA with Hello Kitty shops, caught Mercis napping, and virtually usurped the American market from [Dick] Bruna. Miffy would now struggle to make it; ironically, it would now be seen in America as a copy of Hello Kitty, when in fact it’s the other way around!
One argument for this theory is that Cathy, at least the version concerned in the Cathy lawsuits, does not actually resemble Miffy enough for Mercis to have been reasonably justified in filing a lawsuit against Sanrio. Although Cathy's previous incarnation, Little Honey, did look like a copy of Miffy, Little Honey is never brought up in the legal documents surrounding the lawsuits. An alternative Hello Kitty knock-off conspiracy theory proposes that Hello Kitty is not a knock-off of Miffy, but rather, Belgian cartoonist Ray Goossens's character Musti.
Hello Kitty does resemble Musti more closely than Miffy, as both Musti and Hello Kitty are anthropomorphic cat characters (though Musti is a male rather than female), both lack an obvious mouth, they are drawn in a simplistic and 'cute' way, and are primarily marketed towards children. This version was first proposed by the Extraordinary Ordinary Guy in Japan, through his blog post Copycat on September 11, 2004.