There are so many sanrio characters and I remember in japanese shopping malls, I used to stare for ages at the lovely displays of Kerokeroppi, Hello Kitty, Badbatzmaru, Kikilala, Pochacco, Mymelody, just to name a few. Being extorbitantly expensive for middle income parents - buying a $9 pencil is out of the question, (although my lavish mom did buy me a Kerokeroppi plush that I loved hugging...it cost around $35 which was, and still is, quite a huge sum for a medium sized plush toy) I could only gaze wonderingly at the inaccessible paraphernalia and thus, love them in a way that I would want to buy them for my own when I have the income. Maybe for most girls there was this deep desire too. That's why we would always pause and look at the Hello Kitty displays and some adults turn out to be hard-core collectors.
But that aside, there is also the question of why did Hello Kitty capture worldwide love and international recognition, while most of the rest of the characters remained obscure?
In those days, the late 80s, all characters were given equal shelf-space, later of course, even now, when you walk into the sanrio departments of various places in asia, it seems some of them have disappeared for good. Only Hello Kitty seems to be rising in popularity... hmm, why so?
It seems that the simple explanation is, 'everyone loves hello kitty'.
Everyone seems to identify with, and thus love, certain people. Our favorites.
Some people seem to irk almost everyone. Some call these people hypocrites. Showy-characters...not overtly obnoxious, if you know them on the surface level they seem to be nice people really.
We find kindred spirits in those friends who agree with us on the character traits of certain individuals - not merely agreeing, but vehemently stating their likes and dislikes of the individuals. Could it be that we surround ourselves with people who agree with us? On the other hand, it could be also that our friends observe life the same way we do. Thus, they have the same misgivings.
For the un-hello kitty like people, they often 'engineer politics'. I'm sure most of them do not do it on purpose, perhaps it's their innate functioning of their brain or molecules that causes some things they say and do to be more...political. (They should join the government?)
Primarily because I'm not such a person, what they do irks me. As the chinese says, 'kan ren de' (see people, one.) They go out of their way to act nice to people with greater clout or those who are of use to them. But once you are out of their league of interest, the tap runs cold and you are sadly, often ignored. But when you are back in the league, they turn their smile on a few notches higher. Of course, all of us are like that. When we are introduced to say, a doctor, we do light up a little and give him a well-respected look, as compared to say, a moneylender. Some would not know how to react to that, and have it written all over their faces as well, isn't that so?
But for the political people, we sometimes feel we are being stepped on or shoved aside to make way for their own agendas to better themselves. Thus we have contempt and disgust for them. It's in the subtle nuances that we can detect such a political attitude. They are the people we love to hate, the ones whom if we hear a slight bit of controversy, or scandal, we can't help but gloat a bit... which is quite healing for our soul, especially if we have been trodden over, used, manipulated or oversighted by them. I really wonder what their children would be like or grow up to be having such parents. One thing for sure, I wouldn't let my kids play with theirs.
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