THE REAL PUCCA?

The other day, me and Dylan, along with his wife, were at the SM City in Bacoor not too far from here. Inside the supermarket, I came across this Pucca gift set and seeing the picture on the front, I immediately thought of Jerry. So I took a snap of it with my iPhone to send to her later, for the purpose of teasing her of course. The funny thing is, at the time I didn't recognize the character nor know her name, even though I had actually seen the cartoon a few times in Korea. I had simply forgotten.

When I was living with the family in Korea, the living room and kitchen area was always alive with activity. The computer would be on where Seung Bin was playing games. The TV might be on though no one was really watching. Someone might be cooking in the kitchen. Others might be talking or playing with the dog. So it was that I caught Pucca on the screen, in the background, but didn't remember until now. Anyway, when I got home, I sent that image to Jerry saying, "I saw you at the mall!"

Needless to say, she wasn't too amused. Although we got a good laugh out of it, she went out of her way to explain that she doesn't look like Pucca. So convinced was she that she didn't look like this cartoon character, that she foolishly put her hair into that style just to show me that she didn't look like her. That's when I made the above image and sent it back to her. I also teased that the next time we play some penalty game and she loses, she will have to dress as Pucca for a whole day.

I was doing some research on Pucca and reporting my findings to her when she became concerned as to why I was so interested in this. She also reminded me, again, that they don't look the same. What I was interested in, though, was the success story behind Pucca. You see, neither of us knew, at first, if this was a Chinese, Japanese or Korean creation. It turns out that it is Korean, from a company called Vooz. That, however, is not the most interesting thing about this.


Pucca actually started out as a Flash cartoon on the internet back in the year 2000! The original cartoons had little to no dialogue so that anyone could enjoy them, and they mostly centered around Pucca chasing after her reluctant boyfriend Garu. Over time, the cartoons got more complex and more characters were added, and it grew into the phenomenon it is today. The sheer scope of the success story is what intrigues me.

While it may have started as a simple internet cartoon, today Pucca has replaced Hello Kitty, Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh and other top brands in the world of children's products throughout Europe. Their cartoons are shown all over the world on TV now. There are children's books in multiple languages in many countries. There's, of course, a comic and games and everything else you expect from a major franchise. I guess it took its time to build, but it built up big! It's almost like a textbook success story. I'm thinking the creators must be pretty happy by now.