Creation and history
Gudetama was created in 2013 by then-26-year-old Sanrio designer Amy, or Emi Nagashima (永嶋 瑛美).[7][8] The creation of Gudetama was inspired by an egg she was using to prepare tamago kake gohan for dinner after a long day at work.[9] To her, the droopy look of the yolk seemed cute. She felt that the yolk looked like today's young people – feeling tired about life. Therefore, she designed an egg character and built its personality to attract millennials.
In 2013, Gudetama took part in a food-based competition held by Sanrio to inspire its designers and test out new characters.[10] Gudetama came in second, with the winner of the competition being a cheerful salmon fillet named Kirimichan.[11] Even though Gudetama was initially less popular than Kirimichan, it gained more popularity than the salmon character.[12]
The name "Gudetama" is derived from two parts: the first is the ideophone gudegude, which is used to evoke the impression of something lazy and lacking energy. The second part is from the Japanese word tamago which means egg.[13][14] Therefore, Gudetama can be translated to English as "lazy egg".
As for its art style, Gudetama is marked by its simple line drawing, in keeping with the intention of using the character in anime for children, but which also allows easy mass production.[6]
The first Gudetama animated series made its debut appearance in 2014 in a Japanese TBS TV program called Asa Chan! (あさチャン!), a morning family news section.[15] Each episode of the series only lasts for approximately one minute, and as of 2019 there were over 1200 episodes.[16] The series ended in 2020.
In Dec 2022, the official Sanrio Gudetama Twitter account had over one million followers, the most followed out of all Sanrio characters.[17][18] In 2019, Gudetama was Sanrio's third most profitable character, behind Hello Kitty and My Melody.[19]
