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Money In The Kitty: Hello Kitty a Fine Feline at 30

Sanrio, makers of Hello Kitty, sponsored an exhibition in her honour at Tokyo's Mori Art Centre.

To be a plaything takes talent and usually a splash of sex appeal. But Hello Kitty - a mute, cartoon cat - has neither. Yet the Japanese cartoon character is the centre of a billion dollar toy, fashion and gift industry - and the subject of academic scrutiny. What started 30 years ago in Japan and spread across Asia to Australia, has now fanned out to Europe. Last month at a glamorous party for her 30th birthday at the Rockefeller Centre in New York, celebrities swooned over her. The statistics are, however, impressive: value of worldwide product and licensing sales - $US1 billion ($A1.38 billion); number of new Hello Kitty branded items produced each month - 600; number of countries were Hello Kitty is sold - 60.

Bewitching as those commercial numbers are, they are nothing compared to Hello Kitty's cultural impact. As a trend, it's all about being pink, soft and vulnerable. But the girlish sweetness is micro-managed by her creators who have strict rules. For example, they license the sale of all-pink kitty-endorsed kitchen appliances but refuse to allow her image to be used for anything sexy or even vaguely violent. Yes to microwaves, no to paring knives. "As a father of two young daughters, I'm all for that. I don't want them doing the Britney Spears slut look at eight years old," said Brian Bremner, the Tokyo-based Asia economics editor for BusinessWeek magazine.

Bremner and his co-author, New York Times journalist Ken Belson, took the Hello Kitty trend so seriously that they wrote a book about the character and the company behind it, Sanrio. The brilliance of Hello Kitty is that it consists of so little and yet it's got power. The company was started on a nondescript Tokyo backstreet in the 1970s by an entrepreneurial silk salesman who saw that he could get a higher price for sandals if they were decorated with embroidered figures. Sanrio is now a billion-dollar company on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Bremner and Belson argue that the success of Hello Kitty reflects Japan's particular genius for being one step ahead of world trends. They draw a link between Hello Kitty and the wider graphic arts scene, including manga comic books, animated films - called anime in Japan - and also the game, video, DVD and film industry. Bremmer and Belson estimate the value of the graphic arts sector in the Japanese economy at between $US400 billion and $US500 billion a year, or up to 10 per cent of gross domestic product in 2002. "Whether it is manga, anime, video games or dozens of other media, Japan has turned into a national Toon Town, a giant Petri dish for the graphic arts," they wrote in Hello Kitty, The Remarkable Story of Sanrio and the Billion Dollar Feline Phenomenon.

But back to the cat. There is just enough to the Hello Kitty life story to sustain a fantasy. She was born in London, her name is Kitty White, she weighs exactly the same as three apples and is five apples tall, she likes to play, eat biscuits and practise piano. She always wears a red bow on her ear, she has little black eyes that look straight at you and has no voice, indeed no mouth. This awful disability is said to be crucial to her personality because she is like a blank slate - she can be anything to anyone.

And there must be something to it. When McDonalds in Singapore included a Hello Kitty doll in its happy meals in 2000, an estimated 350,000 people turned up at the stores. It caused fights and a riot to which the civil defence force was mobilised. The Hello Kitty stationery, jewellery, purses, stickers, hand towels and T-shirts that sell for about $US10 are the most popular. But there is also a Kitty big league where handbags and watches sell for thousands.

The brilliance of the Hello Kitty idea is that it consists of so little and yet it's got power. The credit goes to Shintaro Tsuji, now 76, who 30 years ago sensed something about the world economy that others still struggle to see. While other company owners concentrated on the old economy - prospecting for minerals, building factories and investing in heavy engineering - he settled on a piece of graphic design. He took it - the bland face of the cat - and registered copyright. Today it reads like inspired genius. "He realised that a little dose of cuteness could differentiate the most mundane product," Bremner said.

And Mr Tsuji also coined the phrase "social communication" to describe how a fad takes off, perpetuates itself and comes to have its own meaning. His stationery, pens and coin purses were utilitarian dross until the magic moment when they were stamped with the Hello Kitty image. Instantly transformed, they immediately expressed something about their owner.

Hello de Milo is one of the interpretations of Hello Kitty created for her 30th birthday.

And the evolution of Hello Kitty continues. Today in Tokyo at the city's most extraordinary modern art gallery, an exhibition is devoted to her image. Commissioned by Sanrio, artists as diverse as John Lennon's son, Sean, several video makers, and an inspired group of crop-circle artists who carved her perfect likeness into a wheat field, have paid homage to Hello Kitty.

What better place to celebrate Hello Kitty's 30th birthday than atop Venus de Milo. The playful character with the yellow nose and ribbon in her hair, as seen through the eyes of about 60 artists, is celebrating on the road in traveling exhibitions taking her into new territory — to the excitement of fans. "We asked the artists to create their own version of Kitty because we wanted to create a new dimension," said Yo Kato of Digital Hollywood Entertainment, which planned the shows that opened July 31 at Tokyo's Mori Art Museum and the Laforet Museum. American fashion designer Jeremy Scott created "Hello De Milo," a replica of "Venus de Milo" with Kitty's noggin in place of the replica's. In another piece, Japanese artist Nagi Noda made a stuffed doll with half its body as Hello Kitty and half a panda.

Hello Kitty birthday events and special-edition goods abound this year. On Nov. 1, her official birthday, celebrations are planned at Sanrio's theme park in a Tokyo suburb. Fifty sets of gold coins priced at $4,500 have been sold out, and Sanrio is taking orders for a $27,300 Hello Kitty platinum and diamond tiara. The cat is also serving as Special Friend of Children for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, to help get more girls in school in developing countries this year.

Hello Kitty Seems To Have 10 Lives

Yugo Yamaguchi, Hello Kitty's current designer, holding a stuffed toy version of her creation, at Sanrio's offices.

By MAYA KANEKO Kyodo News

Not long after it was created 30 years ago, Japan's ubiquitous cartoon feline Hello Kitty was almost dead. "About five years after its birth, everyone came to dislike Kitty. Consumers got bored with the character and no one volunteered to become a new designer," recalls Yuko Yamaguchi, Hello Kitty's third designer at Sanrio Co.

Yamaguchi, an art college graduate, said she was "forced" to become a Kitty designer in 1980 as the company tried to prevent the brand created in 1974 from dying out. When she took the job, the character had always worn the same clothing and had relatively few posture variations. "I myself did not like Kitty very much at that time, so I decided to eliminate the previous images and do a complete makeover." But with her predecessor having already left the company, Yamaguchi had no one to turn to on the design, so she proceeded by trial and error. "For example, I removed the black outline of the character to help soften its overall image. Gradually, I saw the number of fans attending my autograph sessions increasing," she said.

Her efforts bore fruit by 1985. After studying art design in San Francisco for a year, Yamaguchi released a Hello Kitty holding a teddy bear in 1985. The series became a big hit, making the new Kitty Sanrio's best-selling brand. "I owe Kitty's success to fans. New ideas came to me as I heard their opinions. The company was rather conservative and reluctant to make radical changes to the character, but I believe constant reforms prolonged its life," she notes.

For the anniversary year, unprecedented products, including coins, tiaras and even robots featuring the feline, have or are scheduled to hit the market. Kitty's popularity transcends age and national boundaries. Celebrities in many countries, including Mariah Carey, Cameron Diaz and Britney Spears, have publicly shown their affection for the cat. In the United States, actresses, musicians and fashion designers love the feline, calling it "cool," according to Sanrio.

Yamaguchi first created the black and white Kitty series in 1987 for high school girls. "It was the first attempt by Sanrio to target teens, but the products proved popular among working women and housewives as well," she said. "Nowadays, fans in their 70s come to my autograph sessions. I'm surprised to see sometimes that girls, their mothers and grandmothers all come together and buy goods separately." Yamaguchi says girls or women try to project themselves into the character and consider Kitty their alter ego. "They yearn to be Kitty. I guess they can put themselves into the character all the more because the cat has no facial expressions, with its mouth not drawn," she said.

And there must be something to it. When McDonalds in Singapore included a Hello Kitty doll in its happy meals in 2000, an estimated 350,000 people turned up at the stores. It caused fights and a riot to which the civil defence force was mobilised. The Hello Kitty stationery, jewellery, purses, stickers, hand towels and T-shirts that sell for about $US10 are the most popular. But there is also a Kitty big league where handbags and watches sell for thousands.

The designer always tried to reflect trends of the times when she created new products. In the late 1990s, for example, she released pearl pink quilted goods featuring Hello Kitty. At the time, Japanese high school girls were making money as prostitutes to buy designer bags. "I created quilted Kitties to shift their interests from brand bags," she said. She later created Kitty's boyfriend Daniel as Japanese celebrities became more open in publicly announcing whom they're dating. This year, Yamaguchi released Kitty's pets -- a Persian cat named Charmmy and a hamster called Sugar -- based on the recent pet boom in Japan.

Yamaguchi said she never expected to continue working on Hello Kitty for such a long time. But new ideas keep coming. "Although I will never create such Kitty goods as condoms, lighters and cigarettes, new products will always be born as we enter new ages," she said. The designer hopes Kitty fans all over the world cherish the goods and pass them on to their children. "It is heartwarming to see daughters using Kitty products once used by mothers," she said.