Longevity-wise, Hello Kitty seems to have 10 livesThe Japan Times: Aug. 26, 2004 - - -Not long after it was created 30 years ago, Japan's ubiquitous cartoon feline Hello Kitty was almost dead.
"About five years after its birth, everyone came to dislike Kitty. Consumers got bored with the character and no one volunteered to become a new designer," recalls Yuko Yamaguchi, Hello Kitty's third designer at Sanrio Co.
Yamaguchi, an art college graduate, said she was "forced" to become a Kitty designer in 1980 as the company tried to prevent the brand created in 1974 from dying out.
...In the late 1990s, for example, she released pearl pink quilted goods featuring Hello Kitty. At the time, Japanese high school girls were making money as prostitutes to buy designer bags. "I created quilted Kitties to shift their interests from brand bags," she said...
