Sanrio's Chococat electoral oppression & the core of democratic participation

Disclaimer: like 80% of this is a shitpost, where exactly the shitpost ends and the semi-serious part begins is up to you lol. I just need to post something that's not about atprotocol or I'm gonna blow my brains out so let me info-dump about something completely different for once, sorry if you subscribed because you wanted a consistent flow of hard-hitting product insight but this blog is named multi-hyphenate for a reason and part of the multi-hyphenate is autistic-shitposter so you're just gonna have to deal with it. Also none of you pay me for this so like, idk, I'm not a content creator. Also tbh the only thing I see people on the atmosphere blogosphere talk about is fucking atprotocol and it's all getting very intellectually incestuous so I like to think I'm mixing shit up.

What are the Sanrio elections?

Once a year for a period of a few months, the stationary company Sanrio (best known for the character of Hello Kitty) has an annual election held online - the Sanrio character rankings - where people vote for their favorite characters.

There are global and country rankings from a few individual countries

Interesting to note that Hong Kong and Taiwan are listed as separate territories.

These elections are integral to the heart of the Sanrio fandom because they determine how much of the merchandise gets made, clearly marketing, and maybe even appearances across various Sanrio video games and media materials.

Sanrio is so much more than Hello Kitty!

To most adult non-autistic well-adjusted adults, Sanrio is synonymous with one singular name, a name that's transcended mere mascot-hood into a lifestyle, an identity. The idea of a Hello Kitty girl, at least in American pop culture in the working classes has become synonymous with personality and even race characteristics - Toxic latinas are often associated with Hello Kitty.

I once saw a man break down crying about how poorly evil latina women represented Hello Kitty's pureness and her identity only 3 apples high. Bold move to say with Puerto Rican flag hanging in the background of his Tiktok. ¹(for reference, I am Dominican and Puerto Rican.)

Subtypes of people and their personality types have become encoded with characters - ²The Kuromi white women, the Cinnamaroll asian women. It has become a sort of mascot-phenotype. And there's tons of Sanrio characters, well over 450 - apparently.

Hello Kitty doesn't even crack top 10 in many countries anymore!! DID YOU KNOW THAT!

Sanrio as a company - was created to just sell cute stationary but has since grown into a multi-media behemoth - much like their American contemporaries - Hasbro, Marvel, ect. Yet the time honored practice of character rankings is a deeply Japanese one - seen in other media like J-pop idol culture, Shonen Jump, and many manga magazines dating back to the 1970s. South Korea and China have similar pop culture rankings for K-pop and C-pop respectively as well as reality TV shows and other media - fictional character rankings

Though American Idol and TRL were instrumental in their own waves of normalizing online voting in the past 20 years, the inherent gimmick of ³political participation in their forming and distribution of their own merchandise of their own fandom is something that's never really hit mainstream in western fandoms for long periods of time.

Not all votes are equal.

So the way that the Sanrio character working works is that not that an online vote is simply one vote. Votes are ranked based on activity - a simply online poll count is one vote, playing the online video games for sanrio characters is a second vote, and BUYING sanrio character merch directly from the website is 3 votes.

The structured oppression of Chococat and the tyranny of the white mascot.

Despite all of this, the modern international rankings for the past few years of Sanrios has been mostly white and beady-eyed. Up until 2025 - when a popular Tiktoker, unmoored by the unchallenged reign of Cinnamoroll - the faux "Bunny-that-is-actually-dog" - organized a comprehensive global campaign to get PomPomPurin, the yellow dog to break their reign and push them out. Other character fandoms, sick of the overabundance of Cinnamoroll, rushed to organize under a greater coalition to defeat the white deceiver. It was eventually successful, but a more interesting story was emerging under the fold.

In the US and Brazil, the only two western countries listed - despite the high income and populations of places like Mexico and Canada - the true winner was Chococat.

Despite this Chococat remains often left out of Sanrio group merch, with many people not even knowing who Chococat is.

I would argue in fact, that Chococat's fans, has a structural oppression - as Chococat merchandise is SELDOM offered in most places. Usually only in ensemble competitionist collections that offer a cast of characters - like in the recent Godzilla x Sanrio Mcdonalds collaboration. While even Hello Kitty - who barely makes the top 10 in most countries and globally - gets frequent collaborations and the white devil Cinnamoroll frequently gets exposure and large brand collaborations.

Now, some of this could be that Chococat appeals to the lower masses - and while I am open to that argument - Chococat stationary is seldom sold. Stationary is much cheaper than more expensive merchandise like clothes or computer perks (Sanrio please, I'll make the Chococat PC build just give me SOMETHING).

On just the AMERICAN Sanrio website, there is not even one Chococat notebook nor pen sold alone. And yet Chococat ranks consistently as one of the highest ranked characters in the western hemisphere.

By the sheer love of the people, Chococat was carried despite structural oppression. Despite the fact that there is simply no merchandise - not even bad merchandise. NO MERCHANDISE in And yet despite this, a year later, Chococat has no discernible merchandise publicly available in official Sanrio channels for the basic purpose of stationary. THE THING SANRIO WAS CREATED TO SELL.

Where democracy when it is oppressed? Where is democracy when it is structurally inaccessible to those who can't pay, even those who CAN pay?

Razer, a company known for computer parts recently released a collaboration with Cinnamoroll

Despite the fact Chococat is known for being good for computers and a PC builder........... they simply do not want my boy to win, they don't even want the people to know he exists. My stemboy, my king.....