Increasing numbers of people are realising that Hello Kitty isn’t actually a cat. The allegation that the character is not an animal is made in a portion of a Saturday Night Live sketch.
The popular figure was discussed in the episode, which aired on Sunday, December 4. According to the Daily Mirror, it showed a manager in a Hello Kitty store instructing new hires as they sat behind a selection of the toys.
The manager said: “If you open to page five of your employee handbooks, you’ll see a list of facts about Hello Kitty. As you can see, she loves to bake cookies, she goes to school, and she’s not a cat, she’s a human little girl.”
“No… why did you claim Hello Kitty was a human small girl?” one of the staff retorted. However, despite the fact that many viewers would have thought this was made up for the comedic sketch, Hello Kitty is genuinely a little girl.
When Christine R. Yano saw the display at the Japanese American National Museum, she clarified the situation. Christine R. Yano is an anthropologist from the University of Hawaii. Christine, like the majority of people, had previously assumed Hello Kitty to be a cat.
Christine told The Los Angeles Times : “That’s one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show. Hello Kitty is not a cat. She’s a cartoon character. She is a little girl. She is a friend. But she is not a cat. She’s never depicted on all fours.
“She walks and sits like a two-legged creature. She does have a pet cat of her own, however, and it’s called Charmmy Kitty.” To make the whole storyline even more confusing, Hello Kitty actually lives in London and not Japan.
Hello Kitty was created in 1974 and then the first item, a vinyl coin purse, was introduced in 1975. Originally Hello Kitty was marketed towards pre-teenage girls, but during the 1990s the brand found commercial success among both teenage and adult consumers.
