Happy birthday Hello Kitty! Superstar cat celebrates 40th anniversary

Forty years ago, Japanese product-design and licensing company Sanrio was looking for its first animal character.

There were already too many bears in the market and a world-famous dog called Snoopy. So Hello Kitty was born.

Now, the cute cat with six whiskers and no mouth is a global superstar, consistently the most popular of Sanrio's cartoon characters, which together earned 74.2 billion yen (HK$5.68 billion) for the company last year.

"Hello Kitty has become a part of life," Caroline Tsang Shui-kwan, Sanrio Hong Kong's chief operating officer for Asia, said, adding that handling Hello Kitty was like managing a human star.

"What I do is similar to what a manager does for a star," Tsang said. "We need to be selective about her jobs, and be innovative from time to time to keep fans interested."

Hello Kitty debuted in Japan in 1974, wearing a navy blue jumpsuit and sitting upright in a coin purse. Two years later, in 1976, she stood on her paws for the first time. Four years later, she started collecting more clothes in her wardrobe and adopting different looks.