By 2014, when Hello Kitty was 40 years old, it was worth about $7 billion a year, all without any advertising.
Christine R. You read that right. She is depicted as an anthropomorphic white Japanese Bobtail with a red bow.[4] When Yano was preparing her written texts for the exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum, she says she described Hello Kitty as a cat. "I was corrected — very firmly," she says. "That's one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show.
Yano is an anthropologist from the University of Hawaii (and currently a visiting professor at Harvard) who has spent years studying the phenomenon that is Hello Kitty. The character's first appearance (on a purse) was introduced in Japan in 1975, and brought to the United States in 1976.[5][6] The character is a staple of the kawaii segment of Japanese popular culture.
[7] By 2010, Sanrio had groomed Hello Kitty into a global marketing phenomenon worth $5 billion a year.[8] By 2014, when Hello Kitty was 40 years old, it was worth about $7 billion a year, all without any advertising.[9]










