San-X is one of the top stationery companies in Japan and the creators behind charming and comical characters such as Tarepanda, Sumikko-Gurashi, and their flagship character Rilakkuma. While San-X may be lesser known worldwide than their key competitor, Sanrio, within Japan, Rilakkuma is quite the formidable rival to Sanrio’s Hello Kitty. with numerous promotions, trains collabs, a hit Netflix show, and even equivalent floor space in the Harajuku Kiddy Land flagship store (and I mean if there is any way to measure kawaii competitiveness, that would be it!). Over the next few posts we will profile the rise of San-X from your run-of-the-mill stationery company to kawaii character domination!
San-X was founded in 1932, a whopping 30 years before Sanrio. The company’s original name was Chida Handler, named after its founder, Kyozo Chida. Up until the 1970s, Chida Handler developed pretty generic stationery products targeted at adults. In 1973, Chida Handler changed their name to San-X, based on their logo that featured 3 X’s in a row (san means 3 in Japanese).
Online examples of Chida Handler products are quite hard to come by (understandably, since who really saves or takes photos of functional stationery products from over 50 years ago!). Here is an example of a stationery set from the early 70s for the Expo’70 featuring the 3-X logo but with the Chida Handler name:
Along with changing their name, in the early 70s, San-X started to dabble in adding trendy patterns and various characters to their products. During this time they often relied on designs and characters from overseas artists. Their first character was Deco in 1973. Some other popular designs included the snazzy graphic pattern ‘Concerto’ in 1978, and the 50s style ‘Bobby Soxer’ and the cute dolphin ‘Aqua Marine’ both from 1980.
While none of these designs became huge successes, San-X must have seen the future in kawaii and soon hired their own fleet of in-house designers. Their first in-house design was “Rompish Clown” in 1980. While not a groundbreaking success, it was cute and sold well enough to keep the ball rolling. San-X continued putting out up to 30 new designs a year with a few minor successes such as Healthy Momo, featuring an adorable cow and milk.
In 1984, San-X finally landed their first major success with Pencil Club. Featuring the disheveledly cute pair of kindergarteners, Santou-san and Pun-chan, looking like they just got into some mischief (just what we don’t know…). Using light colors and lines drawn in a sketchy, crayon style that was quite trendy at the time, this cute little pair made the perfect addition to various products targeted at school-age kids from pens and notebooks to plastic mugs and hand mirrors. Pencil club’s popularity would continue for the next 3 to 4 years.
However, the success of Pencil Club would soon pale in comparison to their next big hit, Pinny-Mu, in 1987. Pinny-Mu is a cute little brown bear drawn with thick lines and vivid colors, epitomizing that late 80s style. Pinny-Mu’s simple design along with his cute personality and fun sidekicks made him an instant hit. San-X not only sold various Pinny-mu stationery products, but was also able to land licensing agreements with other companies to add Pinny-Mu to a much wider variety of goods. Soon Pinny-Mu was appearing not only on pens and notebooks but also pillows, shoes, kanji-drills, backpacks, and even playground slides! This business model was obviously quite profitable for San-X and their hard work on developing characters through the decade was paying out some big dividends.
Riding on the success of Pinny-Mu, San-X launched a few other memorable characters in the late 80s including Kaiju Paradise: blending Kaiju and outer space (one of my personal favs). Another major hit during this time was the Waku-waku collection debuting in 1988. ‘Waku-waku’ is a Japanese onomatope word conveying a sense of playful excitement and surprise. The Waku-waku collection featured fun stationery products that put the ‘fun’ in functional! Examples included fortune-telling mechanical pencils and metal pen cases decorated with game boards. Not surprisingly, these products flew off the shelves, and were so much fun, that many become banned from schools! These types of fun and functional product exemplified San-Xs commitment to spreading joy through their products, and the Waku-waku collection products have continued until today!
Learn more about San-X’s rise to kawaii domination in Part 2 and Part 3 of this series, or check out the references below to explore more about the early days of San-X.
References:
Info on pre-90’s San-X is a bit hard to come by online, especially in English. I highly recommend this Japanese Mook from Amazon. The Japanese Wikipedia page also has a list of characters starting with Deco in 1973.
