A Special Hello Kitty Tribute

Yesterday I was having dinner with some girlfriends, and one of them was telling us about the Hello Kitty birthday party for her 4 year old daughter.  As we were talking about Hello Kitty she said, "did you know that Hello Kitty was originally designed by a girl who had been abused by her parents?"

"What?" I exclaimed.  I grew up with Hello Kitty and all her friends (truth be told, I was a Keroppi fan) and I had never heard anything controversial about the little white cat.

She insisted that she had read this on where else but the internet.  She said the story explained why Hello Kitty has no mouth.  Truth be told (I'm very honest today) I had never really noticed that she didn't have a mouth.  I just assumed that her fur covered it up.  But this new explanation seemed way to bizarre even for Japanese anime so, of course, I pulled out my phone and Googled it.  

I started with Wikipedia (my favorite source for pop culture facts) where I learned that, according to the Sanrio company who first launched Hello Kitty, she has no mouth because she speaks from the heart.  That was a sufficient answer to me, but my friend insisted that wasn't the story she had read.

I continued searching and came across anitiasnotebook.com, which shed some light on the story.  Apparently the abused girl story is an urban legend.  It's been in circulation for some time now, but is entirely untrue.  Another untrue, but hilarious Hello Kitty urban legend is that she is actually a tribute to the Devil.  As the "story" goes, a woman had a dying daughter so she made a pact with the Devil that if he spared the daughter's life, the mother would create a cartoon character to pay tribute to the Devil.  A cartoon character, huh?  Yes, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what the Devil would have wanted if this were in fact true.  More over, I'm sure that the Devil would have wanted said cartoon character to be a cute, white and pink, mouthless but fluffy little kitty.  Maybe, like Hello Kitty, the Devil really just wants to speak from his heart. 

With the legend disproved, and the real story straight, my friend was feeling much better about having a Hello Kitty theme party for her four year-old daughter.