Corocorokuririn (コロコロクリリン, Korokorokuririn), or Kuririn (クリリン kuririn) is a golden hamster boy introduced by Sanrio in 1997. [1] He is an orange-and-white hamster with pink feet, round eyes, and round ears. He is always wearing his trademark flower hat.
Personality[]
Kuririn is timid at times, but full of curiosity. He is mischievous and goes at his own pace. He is devoted to his girlfriend, Sakura.[2]
His favorite foods are cookies and sunflower seeds. He enjoys chewing on things and collecting stuff from around the house to make playhouses and is very good at fitting into tiny spaces. He adores cherry blossoms and his trademark is his flower hat.
Kuririn's Family TreeKuririn + Sakura Chibikuri, Komachi, Kurumi, Cherri, Shingo, Milk, Chacha
Family[]
Kuririn has a girlfriend, Sakura, and together they have seven children: Chibikuri, Komachi, Kurumi, Cherri, Shingo, Milk, and Chacha. [1]
History[]
During the 1990s it was becoming more and more popular for children in Japan to have hamsters as pets. They were particularly popular in media in 1996 due to it being the year of the rat in the Chinese zodiac.[3] Sanrio mostly relegated small animal characters as sub-characters, so the designer had the idea of a hamster main character.
The designer brought two hamsters to their office at Sanrio Headquarters to model Corocorokuririn and Sakura after. They became popular at the company with some children visiting them everyday. A manga feature, released in the Strawberry News and on the web, known as Kuririn Diary is about the hamsters in the office and has 81 episodes. You can find an archived version here.
Ranking in the Sanrio Character Ranking[]
In the 2013 Character Ranking, if he reached 20th place or higher, he would stop rolling. However, he has failed to reach that rank.
- 1999: 6th place
- 2000: 6th place
- 2001: 6th place
- 2002: 7th place
- From 2003 to 2009, he was below top 10.
- 2010: 17th place
- 2011: 26th place
- 2012: 29th place
- 2013: 33rd place
- 2014: Below top 20 (8th place in Group D)
- 2015: 26th place
- 2016: 29th place (22nd in Nade Time Ranking)
- 2017: 24th place
- 2018: 23th place
- 2019: 27th place
- 2020: 22th place
- 2021: 20th place (3rd in Hong Kong)
- 2022: 20th place
- 2023: 20th place
- 2024: 19th place
- 2025: 20th place
Official description (2001)[]
This roly-poly little boy hamster is both shy and curious. He loves to play hide-and-seek and always finds the smallest of small places to hide! When nobody else is around Kuririn and his girlfriend, Sakura, go exploring for buttons and seeds and other collectible things (which he hides in his tissue paper bed.) His birthday is February 4th. [4]
Trivia[]
- His birthday, February 4th, is not actually the day that he was born, but rather the day he was brought home by his owner, who is a human girl. He shares this birthday with Sakura, as they were adopted together.
- The day he was adopted, February 4th, is the same day the hamster he was modeled after was adopted at Sanrio Headquarters.
- Kuririn has a total of 86 hamster friends (including Sakura and his children), alongside a tortoise friend named Riku. The exact total of 86 is in reference to Japanese Goroawase wordplay on "ham", presumably shorthand for hamster (8 = ha, 6 = mu, forming "hamu").
- He gets his name Kuririn from his big eyes. Kuririn may mean chestnut.
- In most early designs his flower hat is pale yellow.
- He debuted around the same time as other hamster characters Muffin and Nutz. It is unclear who was the first Sanrio hamster character.
Gallery[]
Sources[]
- February 2017 Calendar on Sanrio.com
- Corocorokuririn Profile on Sanrio.co.jp
- Corocorokuririn Ranking on SanrioCharacterRanking.com via Archive.org (2016)
- Corocorokuririn Timeline on Sanrio.com
- Corocorokuririn Profile on Sanrio.com.hk
- Interview with the designer
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 https://www.sanrio.co.jp/characters/kuririn/
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20050522022103/http://www.sanrio.co.jp/characters/kuririn/welcome.html
- ↑ https://web-japan.org/kidsweb/archives/cool/00-04-06/smallpets.html
- ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20031205020841/http://www.sanrio.com/main/charactersection/ck.html