The secret is out of the bag.
On Hello Kitty’s 50th anniversary, fans were shocked to learn that the beloved cat-themed character isn’t actually feline at all.
“Hello Kitty is not a cat,” Jill Cook, director of retail business development at Sanrio, the creator of the famous cartoon, told Today. “She’s actually a girl.”
In fact, she was a tiny girl – “weighing three apples” and five apples tall – who grew up in the suburbs of London with her twin sister Mimmy, her parents, and the family cat.
However, fans of the beloved character weren’t too convinced, with some expressing surprise that Hello Kitty lived in the UK.
“She has cat ears and whiskers???,” one disappointed user wrote on TikTok.
“If she has cat ears and cat whiskers she’s probably just a girl,” joked another.
“She has whiskers and ears and is called Kitty but is she actually human? What?” one astonished viewer commented.
“Is she British?” said another.
According to anthropologist and author Christine R. Yano, at the time Hello Kitty was created, “Japanese people and Japanese women were obsessed with England,” she previously told the Los Angeles Times.
“They loved the idea of England, which represented the quintessential ideal childhood, like a white picket fence, so this biography was really tailored to the tastes of that time,” she explained, adding that Hello Kitty is, in fact, a “little girl”.
To mark the 40th anniversary of the anime in 2014, Sanrio “very severely” corrected Yano for distinguishing between Hello Kitty’s girlish identity and her cat-like characteristics.
“She’s a friend, but she’s not a cat,” Yano says. “She’s never depicted on all fours; she walks and sits like a two-legged creature. But she does have a pet cat, called Charmy Kitty.”
Half a century has passed since Hello Kitty’s creation in 1974, and numerous events are being held across the country this year to celebrate the character, from a pop-up shop at Nordstrom’s flagship store in New York to Van Leeuwen’s limited-edition ice cream flavor, Yummy Berry White Chocolate Truffle Ice Cream, available for one day only on July 21, National Ice Cream Day.
“For the past 50 years, as an ambassador of friendship and kindness, Hello Kitty has touched the hearts of many people around the world. We want to show our gratitude to our fans by offering memorable Hello Kitty-inspired experiences, both in person and digitally, all year round,” Craig Takiguchi, chief operating officer of Sanrio Co., Ltd., which is planning a number of anniversary events this year, said in a statement provided to The Washington Post.