Japan' reigning idol among teenage
females is a cute 24-year-old who lives with her twin sister, Mimmy, and her parents
George and Mary White, in London, England. She loves baking cookies, collecting hair
ribbons and spending time with her friends. Oh yes, and she's a cat, an animated one at
that, created by Sanrio, the character gift company which has virtually cornered the
market on cute. Meet Hello Kitty, Sanrio's billion-dollar baby.
"Kitty-chan", as she is known to her fans, was born back in 1974 on the drawing
board of the then still-fledgling company Sanrio in Kobe.
She made her market début in 1975 on a small plastic coin purse and since then Kitty has
found her way into nearly every home in Japan, along with other Sanrio characters such as
Pochacco the puppy, Keroppi the frog and Pekkle the duck.
1976 saw the launch of Kitty's Friendship Gift Collection, a comic book and the opening of
the first Sanrio shop in America. Kitty and her other pals at Sanrio boomed to the tune of
nearly JY100 billion in fiscal 1997, with 127 directly managed stores and around 3100
affiliates.
Kitty has made records, acted as Junior Ambassador to UNICEF, made her television début
in the animated series "Daisuki! Hello Kitty", and has starred in several films
and comic books. Naturally, she has her own fan club.
In 1980 Kitty's development was handed down to her present creator, Yamaguchi Yuko. She
and her team are responsible for Kitty innovations like the monotone series, the standing
Kitty and the piano playing Kitty. In 1990, Kitty and her Sanrio friends got their very
own theme park, Sanrio Puroland, in Tama City, which attracts nearly 1.4 million visitors
a year. Those who come to the Kingdom of Cute have the chance to see Kitty and her friends
perform in a live show, ride cute rides and see cute amusements. Sanrio's idea worked so
well that in 1991 another amusement park opened in Oita Prefecture, Kyushu.
The mid to late-'90s have been a time of tremendous growth for Sanrio, with new shops in
Singapore, Indonesia and San Francisco as well as here in Japan. According to Takahashi
Ko, a marketing executive for Sanrio, "Kitty's popularity has grown because Kitty's
original fans are getting older. They are having children of their own, passing on their
love for Kitty to the next generation. Just last year," says Takahashi, "Kitty
experienced the greatest rise in popularity since her creation thanks to pop singer Kahara
Tomomi. She went on the highly rated TV program - Utaban' and told the hosts that she
loved Kitty-chan more than anything. Within days sales in our outlets had nearly doubled.
Since then we have been actively searching for every niche Kitty has yet to fill."
Given that Kitty sells everything from toilet paper to pocket beepers, instant noodles to
feminine protection, it must be quite a daunting task. Kitty has her own cosmetics line,
is de rigueur as the keitai phone cover of choice and was seen this summer on the
well-polished pinkies of Shibuya high-school girls. Yet, strangely enough, the obsession
with infantile cuteness manifested in Kitty and other Sanrio characters has seen a boom in
popularity in the US, with singers like Courtney Love and Exene Cervenka, the lead singer
of LA punk band X, sporting Kitty hairclips and accessories at their live shows. Sanrio
reports US sales figures for 1997 rising to an all-time high of JY5 billion. When Courtney
Love and Kahara Tomomi share a common love, it looks like Kitty's desire to "make new
friends everywhere" is already bearing fruit.
Japan' reigning idol among teenage
females is a cute 24-year-old who lives with her twin sister, Mimmy, and her parents
George and Mary White, in London, England. She loves baking cookies, collecting hair
ribbons and spending time with her friends. Oh yes, and she's a cat, an animated one at
that, created by Sanrio, the character gift company which has virtually cornered the
market on cute. Meet Hello Kitty, Sanrio's billion-dollar baby.
BIG IN JAPAN: