There is a themed restaurant named Hello Kitty Sweets in Taipei, Taiwan. The restaurant's decor and many of its dishes are designed after the Hello Kitty character. In 2015, she made a playable appearance in Super Mario Maker in the form of a Mystery Mushroom costume in the "Super Mario Bros" theme exclusively. When the player plays as her (or My Melody, who also appears as a costume) the jungles have Hello Kitty effects. Hello Kitty cameos with Keroppi and Badtz-Maru in the first few minutes of the 2018 film Ready Player One. Kitty also gets a few more appearances in the film such as a motorcycle decal and as a costume. On April 21, 2020 Hello Kitty made an official crossover live action video called Shimajiro & Hello Kitty in Exercise with Friends in which the mascots of Shimajiro and Hello Kitty joins together to get people to dance and exercise during the Coronavirus pandemic. Hello Kitty was also chosen by AH-Software to become a Vocaloid. The choice was attributed to the fact it was their 50th year anniversary. The Vocaloid was named Nekomura Iroha and was released in Japanese.

Fender began selling the limited edition Hello Kitty Stratocasters under its budget Squier range in 2005. At the time, marketing executives at the instrument maker said, apparently seriously, that “by teaming up with the Hello Kitty brand, we hope to show young women just how much fun playing the guitar can be”, according to Tony Bacon, a guitar historian. “It’s patronising really – how insulting can you be?” he said.In the 2013 Sanrio Character Ranking, if Hello Kitty reaches 1st place, she will go to your side and hug you. She won the ranking, then did a journey to hug everyone in Japan. We are a UK based store and 100% Hello Kitty crazy, so you will be sure to find something to interest you if Hello Kitty is your friend. From homeware to toys, clothing, jewellery, greeting cards, stationery, and some more unusual items, at Dizzy Pink we aim to give you a wide range of the cutest items Hello Kitty has to offer. In 1996 Big Top Productions released Hello Kitty Big Fun Deluxe for Mac & Windows with three guest characters Joey Mouse, Cathy Rabbit, and Thomas Bear making appearances within the game. There are also many songs based on Hello Kitty. 2 of the most popular are by Slayyyter & Avril Lavigne

That,' he says darkly, 'is a copy [of Miffy], I think. I don't like that at all. I always think, 'No, don't do that. Try to make something that you think of yourself.' Merchandise Sanrio and various corporate partners have released Hello Kitty-branded products, including the Hello Kitty Stratocaster electric guitar (since 2006, with Fender in the US) and even an Airbus A330-20 commercial passenger jet airliner, dubbed the Hello Kitty Jet (2005–2009, with EVA Airways in Taiwan). As of August, 28th, 2014 it was rumored Hello Kitty is a human girl and not a cat. However, it has been confirmed that Hello Kitty is actually a gijinka (anthropomorphic) cat and not human. [1]Hello Kitty's popularity began waning in Japan before the year 2000. In 2002, Hello Kitty lost her place as the top-grossing character in Japan in the Character Databank popularity chart and has never recovered. In a 2010 survey, she was in third place behind Anpanman and Pikachu from Pokémon. For a long while afterwards, Sanrio made no particular effort to replace Hello Kitty's designer. Soon Yuko Yamaguchi joined Sanrio in the midst of the Kitty boom in 1978, at the age of twenty-two, hoping to get a job focused on advertising. When Tsuji had learned of the team planning to abandon Kitty, he fought to keep her and decided to hold an in-house competition for new concepts for Hello Kitty. The character's first appearance on an item was a vinyl coin purse in Japan, which ended up being the hottest selling item that year which came as a surprise to everyone. The Hello Kitty brand rose to greater prominence during the late 1990s. At that time, several celebrities, such as Mariah Carey and Lady Gaga, had adopted Hello Kitty as a fashion statement.

Fender gave away several of the guitars at a Billboard awards ceremony, and soon Slash from Guns N’Roses and Dave Navarro of Jane’s Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers posed with them. But that seems to have had little impact on the value of the guitars until more recently. For years, it was only associated with males. But then, obviously, that has changed over the past 30 or 40 years, and now it’s no surprise at all to see women playing electric guitar.” As of August 2007, Thai police officers who have committed minor transgressions such as showing up late or parking in the wrong place are forced to wear pink Hello Kitty armbands for several days as penance. For the 50th anniversary of Sanrio, Sanrio and Girl Skateboards collaborated and released skateboards with a Hello Kitty graphic. There is a Hello Kitty store in Africa opening 2013.

New Products

Shimizu’s former assistant, Setsuko Yonekubo—the same one who had declared Shimizu’s initial illustration so very kawaii—oversaw Kitty during the boom years. She introduced incremental innovations like the first portrayal of Hello Kitty in a standing pose, but otherwise made a point of hewing closely to her predecessor’s linework, down to using a photocopied template of Kitty’s face to ensure uniformity. Whether because of this conservative approach or because of the ever-changing whims of young children, the first Kitty fad ran out of steam around 1979. Yonekubo took the opportunity to announce her own retirement, for she wanted to start a family of her own. The guitars were available at first only through Sanrio, which owns the Hello Kitty brand. “Then Newsweek, at the end of 2005, gave it the top spot for the Christmas list of gifts for the musically obsessed,” Bacon said. “That did them no harm, and they began to sell them generally in January the next year.