Cute Characters: Why Do We Like Them, and What Is Their History?
Illustrated brands have been on the rise throughout the 20th century and continuing in growth into the 21st, with brands like Miffy trailblazing the way for others like Hello Kitty, the Moomins, and later Pusheen to take prominence in the cultural zeitgeist. It is not uncommon for a person to walk into a store and find at least one or two of these characters emblazoned on a shirt, mug, or product.
But how did it get to this point? What is the reason for these characters influencing popular culture so much? As an illustrator, it is important to understand and grasp the larger sphere that these characters have created — with cute illustrated figures taking prominence and becoming much-beloved by many households and people from all kinds of backgrounds.
To understand this is to better understand how to market and push my own work. Through this essay, I will be attempting to discover and explain why these characters grew to prominence, and the effects they’ve had over the last near-century. Additionally, it is a goal of mine to try and learn what makes these characters good — and how I might emulate this myself for a potential future in character-based marketing.
Miffy is one of the oldest characters that is present in the public consciousness and has grown to become one of the most profitable in the East Asian market, rivalled by Hello Kitty. Despite the popular belief that she is a character created in Japan, or that she’s part of the Hello Kitty and Friends lineup, she actually isn’t. She was created by Dutch artist Dick Bruna.
Miffy was created in 1955, a decade after the end of the Second World War. Although she wasn’t originally meant to be part of the “kawaii” genre that would later flourish in Japan, she eventually became one of its foundational figures. She was initially intended as a children’s book character. Bruna came up with her after telling bedtime stories to his son about a rabbit they had seen in the dunes. The decision to make Miffy female was entirely based on Bruna’s preference for drawing the character in a dress rather than trousers.
In the West, Miffy mostly appears in children's books and picture books aimed at young children. At the time of writing, there have been over 124 picture books and more than 32 titles published. However, in Japan, Miffy is a true icon — widely loved, heavily merchandised, and carefully marketed. It’s estimated that she has generated around $330 million in merchandise sales in Japan alone.
To say that she is more popular in Japan than in the West is an understatement. In her home country, she remains a known children’s book character — still appreciated by the target age group — but she’s far less prominent in the wider culture. In Japan, she has become a part of the national kawaii identity. It’s fair to say that Miffy has been absorbed into kawaii culture simply because of her success in the Japanese market.
Sanrio is a company that was founded in 1960 by Japanese entrepreneur Shintaro Tsuji. It originally began as a silk business but expanded a few years later by producing rubber sandals with hand-painted flowers. Eventually, the company moved into the licensing business, selling merchandise featuring popular American characters — most notably Snoopy, who was exclusively licensed to Sanrio in Japan.
In the 1970s, Tsuji made a pivotal decision: instead of relying solely on American licenses, he brought in designers to create original characters. The first of these was Coro Chan, introduced in 1973. The following year, Hello Kitty was born — a character that would go on to become the cornerstone of the Sanrio brand.
Hello Kitty has consistently been Sanrio’s top source of income. She was designed by artist Yuko Shimizu, who left the company in 1976 after getting married and later worked freelance. Despite Hello Kitty’s enormous popularity, Shimizu didn’t profit much from her creation. The character was originally designed for a child’s coin purse, but somehow found appeal among teens and adults, and gradually expanded far beyond her original audience.
Over the decades, Sanrio has introduced more than 450 characters, each with their own unique backstories, personalities, and merchandising strategies. Among the classic lineup, my personal favourites are Keroppi and Pompompurin.
Both characters were created through an internal competition within the Sanrio company, where employees could submit their own designs with the hope of having them developed into official characters. Interestingly, the creators of both Keroppi and Pompompurin chose to remain anonymous — their reasons aren’t public — but the characters still have deep, developed lore. In some cartoons and merchandise, the two are even shown interacting.
Keroppi was created during Japan’s rainy season in 1987 to promote Sanrio products. He reached peak popularity in the 1990s, when he won first place among Sanrio characters. Even today, he remains in the top 10 most popular. He’s also a member of a Sanrio-themed boy band.
Pompompurin, in contrast, had a rougher start. His original design didn’t perform well, and after his debut, his popularity dropped sharply due to questionable marketing decisions. Eventually, Sanrio gave him a slight redesign to make him more appealing — and, strangely enough, they added a butthole. That might sound odd, but in Japan, this kind of anatomical detail is often seen as cute, especially in animals. Amazingly, that small change helped revive Pompompurin’s popularity. It made him feel more dog-like and relatable to fans. He was even awarded first place in Sanrio’s popularity ranking in both 2015 and 2016.
In the 1970s, Sanrio had created a white rabbit character named Little Honey. However, the design ended up looking exceptionally close to Miffy, and later in the decade, she was reworked into a character named Cathy, whose design looked more like Hello Kitty. Even later, she was redesigned again — this time given a mouth — and renamed Daisy. This change coincided with the release of Sanrio-branded cartoons, and was likely also meant to give the character a refreshed look.
As Sanrio's presence outside Japan continued to grow, Dick Bruna felt he had grounds to challenge what he saw as plagiarism of his character, Miffy. In an interview with The Telegraph, he stated that he believed Hello Kitty was a copy of Miffy, and that it annoyed him — he wanted people to be more original with their designs. At that time, though, he had no legal grounds to pursue a lawsuit.
That changed when Miffy turned fifty and became more established as a brand. Bruna wanted to protect the intellectual property rights of his creation. The character of Cathy/Daisy was brought to court in Europe, and a legal order was issued to stop the production of merchandise featuring the character. If Sanrio failed to comply, they would face a daily fine. Naturally, Sanrio pushed back in court.
This legal battle stretched into the 2010s and continued until 2011. However, the devastating tsunami that struck Japan that year shifted the situation. Both Sanrio and Bruna decided to settle the case outside of court. Bruna created an illustration of Miffy with tears in her eyes and the message "My Best Wishes to Japan," and donated the compensation funds to the Holding Hands Foundation, a charity created jointly by the two companies to support Japan’s recovery.
Sanrio also contributed the money it had originally set aside for legal fees to the foundation. They halted all production of Cathy merchandise and retired the character permanently. In addition, a short video was produced for the foundation that featured many well-known characters — including Miffy, Thomas the Tank Engine, Pingu, the Powerpuff Girls, and more — all shown holding hands as a symbol of solidarity and support.
The Moomins are another strong example of a brand that developed global influence. Created by Finnish artist Tove Jansson, the Moomins are deeply personal characters. Tove based many of them on people in her life: Moominpappa and Moominmamma were inspired by her parents and their quirks, Snufkin was based on her ex-fiancé Atos Wirtanen, and Thingumy and Bob were drawn from her relationship with one of her girlfriends — in the Swedish version, they even use their real-life pet names for each other.
The Moomins had a rough start. Tove’s early books didn’t sell very well, likely because they focused more on building the world and exploring character personalities than on structured storytelling. Later books fixed this, and as time passed, her audience expanded far beyond Finland and Sweden — especially in England, Europe in general, and Japan, thanks to translations and various adaptations.
Some of the most significant adaptations were Japanese anime versions made specifically for Japanese audiences. Ironically, Tove didn’t always appreciate these — she felt the adaptations were too “Japanese” in tone, making the stories more violent or crude. This is somewhat ironic, as her original works were sometimes criticized by European reviewers for being too dark or strange themselves.
Regardless, her work eventually became a major commercial success. The anime series and other adaptations helped her universe grow and become more accessible. Her unique art style, the Moomins’ long-lasting charm, and their simple but expressive designs all contributed to their recognizability.
One of the more amusing origin stories in the Moomin universe comes from a disagreement Tove had with her brother about philosophy. After the argument, she stormed off to the family outhouse and drew what she jokingly called “the ugliest creature imaginable.” That sketch became Snork, a character who would appear across her stories as a kind of satire of her brother. The name "Moomin" itself came from a scary story told to her as a child by a relative — meant to stop her from sneaking food at night.
It took a long time for her work to gain momentum. As mentioned before, the anime, cartoons, and other international versions helped introduce the Moomins to broader audiences. Their popularity surged in the 1990s after the release of Tales from Moominvalley, a collaborative work between the Jansson family and producer Dennis Livson, who was connected to an international animation studio. Since then, the Moomins have reached an estimated yearly retail value of around 700 million euros.
More recently, Tove Jansson’s work has seen a revival thanks to increased online availability and the growth of a dedicated fanbase.
At the same time, a number of newer characters have gained popularity largely through the internet — for example, Pusheen during the 2010s, or Line Friends, which started as digital stickers on Korean messaging apps and then exploded into a full-blown merchandise phenomenon. The Moomins themselves also had a kind of internet renaissance in the 2010s and 2020s.
This trend reflects a larger shift: many illustrated characters today gain popularity online first, especially as younger generations are raised in digital spaces. Meme culture acts as a shared language, one that travels across cultures quickly. It’s common now for characters to grow beyond their original niche communities and gain fans internationally through social media.
There are even characters that don’t come from formal brands but have still achieved massive reach — like Biaoqingbao, a Chinese reaction-image format featuring a panda with real human facial expressions and Mandarin text, or Pepe the Frog, a once-simple comic character that’s now used in all kinds of internet subcultures, often with very different meanings.
It’s fair to say that in today’s world, if a character is visually striking or emotionally resonant, its popularity will likely grow through digital channels rather than traditional physical ones — especially with how fast everything spreads now and how globalized internet culture has become.
PSYCHOLOGICAL PERCEPTION AND MARKETING
When creating a cute character, there are usually some rules that are followed and rarely deviated from. Often, you have to give the character more child-like features — like a larger forehead, bigger eyes, and smaller overall proportions. These traits are commonly associated with cuteness and are considered standard in character design.
However, cuteness isn’t a fixed or binary concept. It often depends on how the viewer perceives it. What one person finds cute, another might find unsettling or even repulsive. A good example of this from animation is the character Stitch. He’s not conventionally cute — with sharp teeth and chaotic behavior — but he still has an endearing quality. He plays pranks on the people around him, gets scolded by Lilo, and eventually becomes part of her family. All of that swings him back around into being considered cute and loveable, making him feel more well-rounded and memorable as a character.
Another example is Baby Yoda from the Disney+ series The Mandalorian. The character is perceived as cute by many fans, especially those already invested in the franchise. His small size, big eyes, and awkward behavior contribute to this, even though — technically — he looks like an elderly alien with wrinkles and grey hair. Despite that, his proportions follow the basic principles of "cute design." Still, some people find him unsettling or not cute at all. And that just reinforces how subjective this perception really is.
An example of a product line that tries to capitalize on cuteness is Funko Pops — a widely marketed brand of collectible figurines that all share the same general style. Most of them have beady black eyes, oversized square heads, and minimal detail. Aside from a few that resemble the original characters more closely, the majority of them look almost identical. Personally, I don’t find them appealing at all — I honestly don’t understand the hype.
But despite my own opinion, Funko Pops are massively popular in many fandom spaces. Some people dedicate entire walls of their rooms to displaying them. I’d argue that while they technically follow the standard “cute” proportions — big head, tiny body — they end up looking more soulless than anything else. They’re garish, flat, and barely even resemble the characters they’re based on. The dead black eyes only make that worse.
People are buying them not because they’re genuinely desirable, but because they’re cheap and accessible. High-quality statues or collectibles from favorite franchises are often expensive, especially in the current economy. Funko offers an affordable alternative — even if the end result looks nothing like the source material.
YouTooz is a brand similar to Funko, but it stands apart in a few key ways. They also sell licensed characters at an affordable price, but unlike Funko Pops, I can actually understand the appeal. The designs often resemble the original characters much more closely. While they use a distinct facial style for branding, it still fits the character most of the time. And with some figures, they even go out of their way to create unique facial expressions — which makes them look way better, especially for the price.
A comparable product in Japan would be Nendoroids. Funko has started licensing anime characters, but the result still looks awful due to the rigid "Funko face." Meanwhile, Nendoroids — at roughly the same price — capture the character designs much more accurately. They look good, they’re fun to pose, and they feel intentional.
Another example is Q Posket. Most of their figures look cute — though they also use a very uniform face style across the brand. Like YouTooz and Funkos, this makes them look a bit cheap sometimes, but many of them still come out looking really nice and are great additions to a collection. This just shows that while companies aim for cuteness, they don’t always hit the mark. Even when something looks a bit off or strange, it can still find a market — someone will always find it appealing.
One character I think nails this balance is Labubu, created by Hong Kong artist and designer Kasing Lung, and sold through the Chinese retailer Pop Mart. Labubu might be relatively unknown to the wider public, but the character has recently seen an explosive rise in popularity — largely because K-pop idols have been showing them off online. Naturally, their fans picked up on it and followed.
Labubu is a small monster from a fictional tribe of monsters. They come in a wide variety of colors and themes, often using pastel tones, fluffy textures, and cute proportions — usually small enough to carry on a bag or wear as a keychain. Pop Mart is known for selling them in blind boxes, a trend that’s become massive over the last two decades. Pop Mart especially is recognized for it both in China and internationally.
Labubu’s current design fits the general idea of cuteness — big eyes, round shapes, soft fur — but adds a slight “edge” through the sharp teeth and chaotic energy. They often play pranks on each other and behave mischievously, which makes them endearing. The original design was a bit less cute — taller, with a square-shaped head and smaller eyes. As the character gained popularity, the design evolved to better fit current trends.
This is another great example of "non-traditional" cuteness — characters that look weird, or even off-putting at first, but still manage to connect with audiences. It shows how flexible the idea of “cute” really is.
Often, when characters are created just to look cute — with no story, personality, or deeper traits — they end up feeling flat. They’re just one-dimensional cash grabs. Again, Funko Pops come to mind: licensed characters stripped of what made them interesting in the first place. It’s rare to find one that actually looks appealing.
But when a character has some sort of emotional grounding — a backstory, a personality, or even just a relatable trait — it makes them feel more alive. Take Gudetama, the lazy egg, or Rilakkuma, the bear who just wants to chill. They’re cute, yes, but they’re also deeply relatable. And that’s what makes people want to buy them.
The more human traits a character has, the easier it is for people to connect — and the more likely they are to invest in that character, whether that means a small plush toy or an entire themed room.
Japan, especially in the post-war era, has become something of a cultural anomaly. On the one hand, it’s quite isolated, with very specific traditions and values. But on the other hand, it acts like a megaphone, pushing its soft power — cultural influence — far beyond its borders. Their cultural exports, especially visual ones, reach even the most remote parts of both western and eastern countries.
This is especially true when it comes to character branding. When a character becomes popular in Japan or other countries with strong cultural presence — like South Korea with its K-Pop industry — it often triggers a ripple effect. Take Miffy for example. Without the Japanese market, she might have stayed just a well-loved children’s book character in her home country. But Japan picked her up, licensed her, more than a character from picture books — she became a brand, a symbol, and even a part of pop culture over there. And thanks to that boom in Japan, her recognition in other countries grew, too. She’s now seen as a foundational figure in "kawaii" culture, despite not being Japanese in origin.
The same thing happened with the Moomins. A Japanese animation executive once approached Tove Jansson, wanting to make her characters the basis of a new cartoon series. While it wasn't the first Moomin adaptation, she still agreed. Honestly, I think without those Japanese animations, the Moomins wouldn’t be nearly as huge as they are today. Visual media — especially animation — just has a wider and more immediate reach, especially for kids. And Japan understood this better than anyone.
Sanrio's characters, being homegrown in Japan, had the advantage from the start. But what’s interesting is how they took that domestic strength and turned it into global appeal. Japan has a kind of freedom with character branding that the West doesn’t seem to have anymore. They take creative risks. Sometimes they fail, but when they succeed, it’s massive. In the West, companies tend to play it safe. They don’t take the same level of risks or lean into characters as hard.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Japan’s soft power helps characters not just survive, but thrive globally. Anime fans in the West actively seek out Japanese culture, which naturally leads them to brands like Sanrio, or characters like Miffy and the Moomins — even if those weren’t originally Japanese. A character that gets big in Japan usually ends up getting big everywhere else too, or at the very least, stays relevant longer than expected.
Japan has cafés, themed stores, full-on brand universes for these characters. They take them seriously. Meanwhile, in the West, we often treat characters like sidekicks to products — just a tool to sell cereal or snacks. In Japan, the character is the brand. And maybe that’s the secret to their success.
In the end, cuteness is a matter of perspective. What one person finds adorable, someone else might think is ugly or off-putting. But when it comes to character branding, appearance alone isn't enough. What really matters is the personality, the backstory, and how relatable the character is. A cute design might grab attention, but it's the emotional connection that makes people stay.
We see this play out with things like Funko Pops. They’ve become easy targets for criticism lately — and I get it. I don’t find them appealing either. They all look the same, soulless, with those dead little eyes. But despite that, they still dominate the market. Not because they’re good — but because they’re cheap and accessible. People want to collect something tied to what they love, and most detailed figures are just way too expensive for the average fan.
Then you’ve got examples like Labubu. A weird little monster that somehow works. It’s strange, slightly creepy, but also adorable in its own way. And that’s the point — unconventional designs can work when they have personality and charm. Same with Gudetama, or Rilakkuma. They’re simple, cute, but they also reflect something real. People relate to Gudetama’s laziness or Rilakkuma’s chill attitude. That relatability sells.
What also can’t be ignored is how massively influential the Japanese market is. Characters like Miffy or the Moomins might’ve stayed small, local icons — but Japan embraced them, adapted them, and gave them a platform that pushed them into global consciousness. Japan's willingness to invest in characters — to build worlds around them, give them merch, shows, cafés — that’s what makes the difference.
Meanwhile, in the West, brands have started to feel hollow. It’s like the soul has been stripped out, replaced with generic logos and faceless mascots. Japan still sees characters as the heart of branding — not just a gimmick. And I think that’s something we seriously need to learn from. Their approach isn’t perfect, but it’s passionate, and most of all, it works.
Characters cross boundaries — language, culture, age. They speak to people in ways that ads and logos just can’t. That’s why they last. That’s why they’re powerful. It’s also why, as an illustrator, I’ve come to realize how important character design really is. This whole process — writing this, thinking it through — has helped me better understand what kind of work I want to create, and how I want to connect with others through it.
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