'I created Hello Kitty'
It’s 50 years since the creation of one of the world’s most recognisable characters, Hello Kitty.
In 1974, a 24-year-old Japanese illustrator called Yuko Shimizu put pen to paper to draw the famous cartoon.
Her creation has helped the entertainment company Sanrio generate more than $80 billion to date.
Here’s everything you need to know about Hello Kitty.
Witness History is history as remembered by the people who were there.
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Who created Hello Kitty?
In 1974, Yuko Shimizu started working for a company called Sanrio, which specialised in rubber sandals decorated with strawberry prints.
Eager to create another best-selling product, the company started hiring lots of young illustrators to come up with a new winning design.
Yuko and her fellow illustrators had a simple brief centred around the word 'kawaii', meaning cute.
(Photo: A replica of the first ever Hello Kitty product. Credit: Getty Images)
Designing Hello Kitty
Her design – a white cat with a red bow in its hair – only took a couple of days to complete.
Yuko asked her assistant to give it the seal of approval.
“I had a young, female assistant and I showed her both the front and side profiles, and asked which she thought was cute,” Yuko told Witness History.
“She said she thought the side profile was the cutest.”
Initially, the design was released on small purses, along with six other cute characters.
However, the Hello Kitty design far outsold the others, quickly becoming Sanrio’s fastest selling product.
(Photo: Hello Kitty toys. Credit: Getty Images)
Is Hello Kitty a cat?
The inspiration for Hello Kitty came from Yuko’s childhood.
I was thrilled and the memory stayed with me, so, I decided to create a character from the little kitten.
“When I was a child, I got a small white kitten from my father for a birthday present,” she said.
However, more recently, Sanrio have provided a detailed backstory for Hello Kitty.
According to the company, Hello Kitty’s real name is Kitty White and she was born in England.
She isn’t a cat. Instead she’s an eight-year-old girl and she has her own pet cat of her own called Charmmy Kitty.
(Photo: Hello Kitty toys. Credit: Getty Images)
What happened to the designer of Hello Kitty?
Yuko left Sanrio just two years after creating Hello Kitty, at the age of 27, to have a family.
She continued working as a freelance illustrator.
She most recently created the character, Rebecca Bonbon, who is described as being ‘the most stylish Bulldog on the planet.’
You can hear Yuko Shimizu's full interview on 91热爆 World Service's Witness History on 91热爆 Sounds - it's the episode from 28 June.
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