subject: Take A Walk Down Memory Lane With An Old Favourite [print this page] The character is based upon a cartoon designed by Japanese company, Sanrio, during the summer of 1974. She is assumed to be a Japanese bobtail cat, and is easy to spot amongst the many products on sale today. She has a rounded appearance, and normally sports a red bow and dress although other designs, such as pink chequers, exist too unusually, she generally has no mouth more on this later.
When Sanrio first created merchandise sporting this cute cat, they could barely have imagined the extent of its global success. Today, annual sales of Hello Kitty branded merchandise reach, in excess of 1 billion! She is present on over 40,000 different products and is sold in more than 50 different countries, including the United States and Japan.
According to the Sanrio group, this little minx of a kitten has multicultural origins, with dual nationality shared between England and Japan she truly is a kitty born of a contemporary society. With those kind of diplomatic credentials, it should come as no surprise that as a brand, she has acted as ambassador in more than one official role, including tourism in Hong Kong and China, and even had an ambassadorial role in the United Nations International Childrens Fund and there is barely a sweeter character to use to that end.
The reason for her suitability as a childrens ambassador are twofold. Firstly, she was created in the aftermath of student unrest in Japan during 1971, her rounded features and cuddly image were purposefully designed to placate the general population somewhat, by offering alternative stereotypes to the violence that had become signature to the country during that troubled era. Secondly, because she was drawn without a mouth, this imbued her with a psychological advantage; it enabled empathy between people and the image, as without expression, people could project their own feelings upon the character and create a quasi sense of camaraderie with her.
During the 1980s, Hello Kitty wandered a lonely path, losing some of her global popularity, but in the 1990s Sanrios marketing strategy blessed her with a second chance. The 1990s saw a general trend in popular culture towards nostalgia, or retro. Shops began stocking merchandise to appeal to an older generation than was her customary type: pre-adolescent girls. For people who had grown up with, and loved, the brand, she made the return to a nostalgic past easy. Today, there is an incredible array of adult merchandise, such as adult clothing, wedding cards, computer accessories...as we all take a much-loved trip down memory lane; our fateful kitty companion walks beside us, a firm favourite.
