How Hello Kitty rules the world
As the Japanese logo is brought to life for a global touring show, Julia Llewellyn Smith of the London Daily Telegraph discovers the amazingly far-ranging appeal of the squeaky clean cat
In a studio in London’s East End, images of brightly coloured ice-cream scoops flash on a huge screen. In front of it, a giant dog, a penguin with spiky hair, a pink-eared rabbit, a woman and an enormous Hello Kitty are conversing in helium-squeaky voices.
“I’m really not sure,” bleats Hello Kitty (impressively, given she has no mouth).
“Oh, go on, Kitty,” urges the rabbit, who turns out to be Kitty’s best friend. “My Melody.”
“Well, I guess it will be fun,” demurs Kitty, her neon nose flashing, then cries: “OK, I’ll do it.” With squeals of delight, the gang launch into as spirited a dance routine as is possible in enormous animal suits, gyrating to Echosmith’s Come Together.
Welcome to the surreal world of Hello Kitty Live: Fashion and Friends — rehearsing for its world premiere at the Hammersmith Eventim Apollo. Amazingly, despite Hello Kitty’s 41 years of world domination (the Japanese brand is worth $7 billion US annually), it’s the first time the logo that’s adorned everything from toilet seats to airliners, pencil cases to “personal massagers,” will have embarked on a live, global tour.
“We had to get special permission from her owners, Sanrio, to have her talk — it was a big deal,” says producer Serena Pellegrino.
“The responsibility of giving Hello Kitty a voice is quite considerable,” adds director Adam Stafford. “We’re just hoping we won’t dash people’s expectations.”
There can’t be a British household with preteen girls that’s oblivious to Hello Kitty. For my daughter’s sixth birthday, four years ago, I forked out around £100 ($200) on an HK cake, decorations and an HK suit in which my husband dispensed HK party bags to giggling little girls.
In her native Japan, the phenomenon is even stronger, with two Hello Kitty theme parks ( another has just opened in China) and the title of tourism ambassador to China. So what is the appeal of this guileless creature with a red bow at her ear?
Despite her bland appearance, Hello Kitty’s backstory is complex, not least because — despite the whiskers — she is not officially a cat, but an English schoolgirl named Kitty White, compared by her creators, Sanrio, to Mickey Mouse. “No one would mistake the Disney character for a human — but at the same time he’s not quite a mouse. Just like Hello Kitty isn’t a human, she’s not quite a cat either,” it clarified when baffled fans learned the news last year.
Her official biography, devised in the 1970s when the Japanese were in thrall to all things British, outlines how Kitty lives in the London suburbs with her parents and sister (called Mimmy in the show), is a Scorpio who loves apple pie, and who also loves English, music and art at school.
Little of that mattered to the Japanese who, from the moment she first appeared on a purse, saw the character as the epitome of their cult of kawaii or “cuteness.”
Slowly, her popularity grew in the West, boosted in the early 2000s when stars such as Sarah Jessica Parker and Mariah Carey embraced the brand, in what psychologists declared to be a nostalgic yearning for childhood security and innocence.
“The show’s target market is girls aged three to 10, but I think they’ll be surprised how many adults come along,” says Katrina Flavell, who plays Sophie, the human little girl who narrates the show and interacts with the audience.
“The Facebook page is full of comments from women, saying: ‘Oh, shall we go, girls?’ I really liked Hello Kitty as a little girl and I really like her now. There’s just something so safe about her.”