The Origin of Hello Kitty

I was chatting to my friend yesterday who runs the blog Legendary People, and I muttered something along the lines of "I wonder where Hello Kitty actually came from...."

I already know about the character Hello Kitty. Her height, where she lives, her birthday, etc. (I will have to create a post of Hello Kitty fun facts at some point, if I remember....) But I don't really know where she came from as a concept.

Then today, as I was visiting my friend's blog, I saw he did a post earlier titled 'Where Does Hello Kitty Come From?' XD

He has quite a few interesting posts on famous/legendary people actually. Interesting facts and stuff that I would never have known otherwise <3

If you want more information,

you can read this little bit off of Wikipedia:

Background

In 1962, Shintaro Tsuji, founder of Sanrio, began selling rubber sandals with flowers painted on them.^[12] Tsuji noted the profits gained by adding a cute design to the sandals and hired cartoonists to design cute characters for his merchandise.^[12] The company produced a line of character merchandise around gift-giving occasions.^[13] Hello Kitty was designed by Yuko Shimizu and was added to the lineup of early Sanrio characters in 1974. The character's first appearance on an item was a vinyl coin purse in Japan. She first appeared in the United States in 1976.^[4][5]

A spokesperson for Sanrio says that Hello Kitty is not normally given a mouth because "without the mouth, it is easier for the person looking at Hello Kitty to project their feelings onto the character" and that "the person can be happy or sad together with Hello Kitty."^[14] There has been some suggestion that Hello Kitty has its origins in Maneki Neko, and that the name Hello Kitty itself is a back-translation of Maneki Neko, which means beckoning cat in English.

- Hello Kitty article on Wikipedia

I love that last little bit at the end about why she doesn't have a mouth. I think that's amazingly adorable <333