Sony Wants to Create an Original Character IP to Rival Hello Kitty — and a Stressed-Out Insomniac Bear Is in the Running

Japanese quality goods, similar Hello Kitty, are fashionable worldwide for their cute and recognizable designs. Now, Sony is entering the fray. Sony Creative Products (SCP), the part that manages the Sony Group’s quality IPs, wants to make its ain characters with cosmopolitan entreaty that tin make 10 cardinal yen (approx. $62.8 million) successful yearly income by 2030.

As reported by Nikkei, the purpose is to make archetypal characters that Sony tin marque merchandise and multimedia centered around. To this end, it has established a dedicated squad tasked with creating imaginable deed characters, and adjacent opened a peculiar lawsuit abstraction successful Tokyo.

Living successful Japan, you truly can’t flight from mascot characters and their merchandise. Chances are your nearest bank, supermarket oregon accelerated nutrient concatenation is doing immoderate benignant of collaboration with immoderate recognizable bug-eyed cutie. Many companies, cities and prefectures person their ain mascot characters (the champion known is astir apt Kumamoto prefecture’s Kumamon). Then there’s the large subordinate successful quality goods: Sanrio, location of the world-famous Hello Kitty and a full unchangeable of fluffy icons including Kuromi, Cinnamoroll, and Pompom Purin. There’s besides San-X, the creator of Rirakuma, and the Sumikko Gurashi household of characters.

Now, Sony is aiming to instrumentality connected this marketplace with caller archetypal characters of its own. Currently successful the moving is Nemu the Night Owl Bear, who has racked up implicit 1 cardinal followers successful a year. Created successful collaboration with Tokyo-based institution Tsumupapa, Nemu is simply a carnivore quality who worries truthful overmuch astir life’s problems that helium struggles to sleep. According to a SCP enforcement serviceman Nikkei interviewed, this “stress-filled nine taxable is resonating crossed borders,” with the carnivore seemingly gaining overmuch popularity successful South Korea. Further plans for merchandise and an anime featuring Nemu are presently successful the works.

Sony’s extremity of 10 cardinal yen successful yearly income by 2030 for archetypal IP characters is simply a comparatively precocious one. For context, a quality successful Japan is usually considered a deed if its merchandise racks up betwixt 2~3 cardinal yen successful yearly sales, according to SCP. However, with the Sony Group’s wide scope crossed anime, music, crippled and film, an archetypal mascot (or two) already has galore imaginable avenues to people fans and make revenue.

As for the video crippled sector, portion Nintendo has Mario and Sega has Sonic, Sony has ever struggled to find an enduring mascot. If you inquire gamers who Sony’s mascot is, their reply volition astir apt beryllium connected which PlayStation procreation they grew up with. They mightiness accidental Crash Bandicoot, Sackboy, oregon Astrobot. Then determination are the galore quality characters from one-time PlayStation exclusives that became associated with the marque (Lara Croft, Solid Snake, Kratos, Nathan Drake et al.). There’s besides Toro Inoue, the achromatic feline from the Doko Demo Issyo bid who became a PlayStation mascot successful Japan for a while. However, Toro lacks the wide planetary designation that Nintendo’s plumber and Sega’s bluish hedgehog enjoy.

The existent contented is that Sony suffers from a deficiency of fully-owned, recognizable archetypal characters, and the SCP aims to code this. It has a way grounds successful handling home events for fashionable quality IPs owned by different companies, and for revitalizing circumstantial IPs successful Japan, similar the Peanuts comic portion characters (Snoopy and co.), which it acquired successful March 2026. SCP is besides utilizing exertion to heighten peoples’ encounters with specified characters astatine events.

To this end, Sony Creative Products opened the Yurakucho Museum successful Tokyo. This abstraction aims to supply immersive character-related exhibitions. Currently, SCP is utilizing haptics to heighten a Pingu exhibition, including vibrating floors and gusts of wind. Sony holds the selling rights to Pingu successful Japan, and doubled the Swiss-born penguin character’s merchandise income successful the state past twelvemonth (source: Mainichi).

But tin Sony use its selling successes with well-known quality IPs to its ain marque new, archetypal creations? Could we get tie-in anime bid and games with immoderate cute caller Sony characters? Watch this space.

Image credit: Tsumupapa.

Verity Townsend is simply a Japan-based freelance writer who antecedently served arsenic editor, contributor and translator for the crippled quality tract Automaton West. She has besides written astir Japanese civilization and movies for assorted publications.