Aimee Walker
People are only just realising that Hello Kitty isn’t a cat and it’s freaking them out.
Hello Kitty, whose real name is Kitty White, is an iconic character that has been around since the 1970s.
She was created by Yuko Shimizu and her current design is by Yuko Yamaguchi.
Hello Kitty is owned by the Japanese company Sanrio and over the years, tons of merchandise has been produced.
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The fictional character particularly rose in popularity in the 1990s, amid the huge interest in kawaii culture.
Sanrio’s senior director, Dave Marchi, reportedly said that the character garnered more than $8 billion in the retail business for 2013, as reported by CNN.
Over the years, animated TV and films, video games, comics, books and even theme parks have been based on the character.
You’d think with such a huge fandom, everyone would know everything there is to know about Hello Kitty – however, you’d be wrong.
A new skit claims that Hello Kitty is not a cat or even an animal.
On an episode of Saturday Night Live, the truth about the character is shared and many people have been left gobsmacked.
The skit follows a Hello Kitty store manager who is training new employees.
“If you open to page five of your employee handbooks, you’ll see a list of facts about Hello Kitty,” the manager says.
“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.”
In response, one employee says: “No… why did you say Hello Kitty was a human little girl?”
At the time the sketch aired, many people presumed the claim was just a part of the jokes – but it’s actually true.
Christine R. Yano, who is an anthropologist at the University of Hawaii, has set the record straight on the matter.
When visiting an exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum, she addressed the rumour that Hello Kitty isn’t a cat.
Yano told 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.”
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To make things even more confusing, Yano claims Hello Kitty ‘lives in London’ and not Japan, as everyone presumes.
People are now taking to social media and reacting to the news that the iconic character isn’t a cat after all.
“Ruined my whole childhood,” one person comments.
Another insists: “I do not see, I do not believe it.”
Somebody else writes: “Just learned Hello Kitty isn’t a cat. Life is just one big joke now, huh?”
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