About Hello Kitty

Knowing the story about hello kitty seems as interesting as collecting the stuff and the whatnot. However, not every one of us knows the story behind the cute hello kitty. So it would be advantage to know the history.

It started in 1971, when a toy company, Sanrio Co. planned to create cute images on their stationary. Since they had to pay the royalty for each outsourced images, they decided to hire the designers. Outsourcing to be in house designers, they successfully created popular animal characters such as dog, white cat and bear.

Then in November 1974, hello kitty was born by designer Ikuko Shimizu. The first product released with an image about hello kitty was a small clear vinyl coin purse that retailed for 240 yen in 1975. When Hello Kitty was invented, British culture was the craze in Japan. As a result, Hello Kitty was made to live in suburban London with her twin sister Mimmy and parents George and Mary White. She also has a pet cat named Charmmy and a hamster named Sugar.

Among the Sanrio characters, hello kitty was a popular character to pre-teen girls in the early 80s. Many girls collect various kinds of stationary with the theme about hello kitty. Not only teens who are crazy for this kawaii character.
The older women also love everything about hello kitty. Let’s say the singer Katty Perry whose dress up was about hello kitty at London Music Award.

The amazing part about Hello Kitty is she accounts for half of Sanrio’s $1 billion in revenues and is still popular in over 60 countries. Thanks to many licensing deals, she can be found on kitchen appliances, car accessories, diamond jewelry and more! There are also several videos including a 3D animation released last year called The Adventures of Hello Kitty & Friends.

Today, Hello Kitty remains one of Japan’s most popular brands. And each year, hundreds of new products are introduced and hundreds are taken away to keep fans excited about hello kitty items to add to their collection.