in 1 collection
From World Market:
"Dressed in a festive kimono, this Hello Kitty tiki glass highlights an updated take on the traditional style of the beloved Sanrio character. The figural glass is part of our exclusive Tokyo collection, which combines an eclectic mix of images that offer various viewpoints of the famous city, from serenely beautiful to boldly energetic."
Sold exclusively at World Market stores.
Hello Kitty (Japanese: ハロー・キティ, Hepburn: Harō Kiti), also known by her full name Kitty White (キティ・ホワイト, Kiti Howaito), is a fictional character created by Yuko Shimizu, currently designed by Yuko Yamaguchi, and owned by the Japanese company Sanrio. Sanrio depicts Hello Kitty as a young female gijinka (anthropomorphization) of a Japanese Bobtail cat with a red bow and no mouth. According to her backstory, she is a perpetual third-grade student who lives outside of London.
Since the character's creation in 1974, the Hello Kitty media franchise has grown to include clothing, accessories, toys, games, books, manga, anime series, and music albums, along with other various product lines and media productions. By 2010, Sanrio had turned Hello Kitty into a global marketing phenomenon, worth $6 billion a year. By 2014, when Hello Kitty was 40 years old, she was worth about $8 billion a year. Hello Kitty has become one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time.
Hello Kitty is a staple of the kawaii segment of Japanese popular culture. First marketed toward pre-teenage girls, Hello Kitty's image found commercial success among not only her original target audience but adolescent and adult consumers as well.
Some speculation, though not confirmed, that Hello Kitty was inspired by the Maneki Neko (Beckoning Cat).
