Gudetama

About

Gudetama is a popular Japanese mascot developed by Sanrio, the company behind Hello Kitty. He is an egg with crippling depression.^[1] Its name derives from the Japanese characters meaning "lazy" and "egg."^[2]

Origin

Gudetama made his debut in 2013 following a contest internally run by Sanrio to introduce food-based characters. He came in second, but popularity since has far surpassed his competitors.^[3]

Spread

Gudetama soon became Sanrio's most popular creation since Hello Kitty.^[4] Since 2013, his face has appeared on over 1,700 items of merchandise. He also has a short television series featuring his deep malaise that airs on the Japanese network TBS. As of 2015, there have been hundreds of episodes of the show.^[5]

In 2014, Sanrio rolled out a series of Gudetama stickers developed for online chat.^[6] As of August 9th, 2016, Gudetama has nearly 160,000 Facebook likes,^[7] 668k Twitter followers,^[8] and 12.7 Instagram followers.^[11]

2016 found Gudetama gaining Western exposure, as news outlets like First We Feast, The AV Club,^[9] Today Online,^[10] and PRI covered the spread of Gudetama and investigated why such an outwardly depressed egg captured Japan's heart. Speaking for PRI, AltJapan co-founder Matt Alt explained the phenomenon.

"The reason Gudetama is so popular is, well, the cute design. But also because all of us feel like retreating into our shells from time to time. And he is literally retreating into his shell."

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References