Not long after it was created 30 years ago, Japan's ubiquitous cartoon feline Hello Kitty was almost dead.
"About five years after its birth, everyone came to dislike Kitty. Consumers got bored with the character and no one volunteered to become a new designer," recalls Yuko Yamaguchi, Hello Kitty's third designer at Sanrio Co.
Yamaguchi, an art college graduate, said she was "forced" to become a Kitty designer in 1980 as the company tried to prevent the brand created in 1974 from dying out.