From Hello Kitty to Pop Mart

Since my last piece about bag charms, inspired by my observations on the Shanghai metro, was warmly received and widely discussed, I have, without doubt, fallen deep down the rabbit hole of cuteness.

Darren Gore kindly shared with me his research on this topic in Japan, featuring the irresistibly adorable Hello Kitty, the emblem of Japanese cuteness that has swept across the world since the 1980s. Embedded in his meticulously curated article, she pulled me even deeper into this universe where cuteness is becoming cool again. With the gripping and brilliantly written Pink Globalization in hand, I rushed to the Sanrio Gift Gate flagship store on East Nanjing Road, the “mother” of this pink cat,  to reconnect with this lingering nostalgia firsthand.

The Sanrio Gift Gate flagship store sits in one of the prime locations on East Nanjing Road, where tourists from around the world swarm through Shanghai in search of little souvenirs to take home. In many ways, the store perfectly captures this universal desire for something small, emotional, and comforting for unburdening social communication. Most people inside, tourists especially, seemed to be searching not simply for products, but for tiny pieces of sweetness and nostalgia.

The moment I stepped into the store, I was immediately pulled back into my own familiar kawaii universe, binge-watching Japanese anime, exchanging manga books at school, and obsessively doodling kawaii characters myself: oversized almond eyes, tiny mouths, and that signature infantile femininity.

Yet most of the Kyarakutā (character IPs) in the store are now outside my radar, quietly reminding me of how many years have passed since my tween days. But my pink girl, Hello Kitty, is still there, a constant star among the ever-expanding cast of newly invented characters. She remains my forever girl: always quiet, never intrusive in the way so many things have become in the post-social-media age.

She is the kind of girl my beloved grandmother always adored, quiet and elegant, yet possessing the subtle power and presence to make her statement loud and clear when needed. And famously, Hello Kitty was never really a cat, but a girl. In many ways, she feels like a miniature symbol of girlhood and a distinctly East Asian femininity, restrained, subtle, inward-looking, and softly poised. In contrast, Barbie embodies a more Western ideal of femininity: bold, extroverted, expressive, and unapologetically visible.

It comes as no surprise that one of the hottest-selling collections in the store today is the Shanghai limited-edition series, featuring beloved local delicacies such as shengjian bao (pan-fried soup buns), xiaolongbao (soup dumplings), and guotie(potstickers), all stamped with Hello Kitty’s face. There is something wonderfully amusing and oddly fitting about associating Hello Kitty with these soft, pillowy, plump little buns and dumplings: pale, rounded, chubby, and irresistibly baby-like in their adorableness.

Credit: Xiaohongshu

Interestingly, the Pop Mart store sits right next to Sanrio.

After attaching my Hello Kitty guotie charm to my tote bag, I stepped into Pop Mart’s world and joined the crowds gathering around the blind boxes. Fans were frenetically shaking each box, convinced they could somehow identify the exact figure hidden inside. (I remain deeply skeptical and perplexed by how anyone believes they can determine the “right” one purely from the sound of a shaking box. Perhaps only Chinese xuanxue, a kind of mystical metaphysics, can explain it.)

If Sanrio sells nostalgia, then Pop Mart sells fantasy: outer space, Nordic folklore, gothic aesthetics, dark whimsy, and emotionally charged imagination. Both are designed to satisfy emotional cravings but in fundamentally different ways.

Photo by the author

First, Sanrio belongs more to girl culture, while Pop Mart feels far more inclusive.

Most of Sanrio’s Kyarakutā (character IPs) were born out of Japan’s kawaii culture, deeply intertwined with girlhood, femininity, and the emotional history of young women. Pop Mart, however, represents an evolution of the cuteness economy by successfully extending it into male territory.

What fascinates me most is that many men do not buy these plush toys simply as companions, but as tiny extensions of themselves.

I have become strangely obsessed with observing the bag charms men choose to dangle from their bags. They often reveal a miniature alter ego: the mischievous dinosaur, the socially awkward little monster, the chaotic creature filled with hidden superpowers, or the strange but lovable oddball navigating urban life. These characters allow men to reconnect with a version of boyhood rarely tolerated in adulthood, playful, imperfect, emotionally expressive, slightly rebellious, imaginative, and socially awkward in an oddly charming way. Perhaps that is why a bag charm can sometimes introduce a person more accurately than words ever could.

Photo by the author

Second, these characters quietly reveal the shifting landscape of global soft power.

Hello Kitty was born during the peak of Euro-American cultural influence. According to the book Pink Globalization, Hello Kitty was created around the fantasy of a middle-class London lifestyle, its domesticity, taste, refinement, and aspirational charm. She was a pink little girl-cat living the kind of life many consumers across Asia dreamed about throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

But time has moved on, and now it is 2026.

Today, Nordic lifestyles, aesthetics, emotional philosophies, and ideas of wellbeing have increasingly become the new global aspiration. And perhaps that is why Labubu was born out of Nordic folklore.

Labubu is no longer the quiet, obedient, perfectly polished little girl. Instead, it is a mischievous little creature with nine protruding teeth, slightly wild, slightly ugly-cute, carrying enough attitude and personality to survive the emotional chaos of urban life.

After Labubu came characters like Crybaby, Molly, and Twinkle Twinkle, IPs that reflect a new emotional language centered around individuality, mood expression, vulnerability, and attitude, even sadness, negativity, awkwardness, and emotional instability are now allowed to be visible. These characters are no longer simply toys. They have become emotional avatars of today’s zeitgeist.

Last but not least, I cannot help wondering what these toys might quietly reveal about the future social and cultural landscape we are moving toward. But perhaps it is still too early to make any bold and potentially clueless predictions. So for now, I will simply leave this as a conversation starter or perhaps as a small hook for better thoughts yet to come.