Miffy

History

Miffy was created in 1955 after Bruna had been telling his one-year-old son, Sierk, stories about a little rabbit they had seen earlier in the dunes, while on holiday at Egmond aan Zee. Miffy became a female after Bruna decided that he wanted to draw a dress and not trousers on his rabbit. Depending on the story, Miffy can range in age from being a baby to being four years old.

At first Miffy looked like a toy animal with floppy ears but by 1963, she looked the way we see her today a stylized form of a rabbit. Miffy is drawn in a graphic style, with minimalist black graphic lines. Bruna chooses to only use black, white, the primary colors (red, yellow and blue), green and orange. It is his use of primarily primary colors that makes Miffy instantly recognisable, and also popular with preschoolers, because of her bright and intense simplistic colors.

There are now almost 32 Miffy titles and many more for the other characters. Bruna has produced a total of 124 picture books for children. The Miffy books each contain twelve pages of story. Each page has one illustration and four lines of verse, the last word of the second line rhymes with the last of the fourth. They are written about things that children can understand, and situations they will face such as going to the hospital and going to school, and they always have a happy ending. Some books have no text at all, such as Miffy's Dream.

The books are printed in small format. Bruna considers it important that his audience feels that his books are there for them, not for their parents. Most Miffy books have an advisory reading level of age 4 to 8 years.

Bruna's books have now been translated into more than 50 different languages, and over 85 million copies have been sold all over the world. He has won many awards for his books, such as the Golden Brush in 1990, for Boris Bear and the Silver Brush for Miffy In The Tent in 1996. In 1997, he was awarded the Silver Slate for Dear Grandma Bunny, a book where Miffy's Grandmother was sick and died.

The other characters that appear in the books are her family: Miffy's parents, her Grandma and Grandpa who are her father's parents, her Auntie Alice which is her father's sister, and 'Uncle Brian' a family friend, who appears in Miffy Goes Flying. A new brother or sister for Miffy is introduced in Miffy And The New Baby. She also has many friends, Boris and Barbara Bear, who first appeared in 1989 and are boyfriend and girlfriend, Poppy Pig, who appeared in 1977, and her niece Grunty, Snuffy, who appeared in 1969, and other bunnies such as Aggie and Melanie.

Miffy was designed as a children's book character, but the design is now used on many other things like clothes, stationery, toys, glasses, household items etc.

In the early 1990s, an image of Miffy holding an adjustable spanner coyly behind her back appeared on flyers produced by people taking direct action against the UK government's road building program. This unauthorised use of the character spread and Miffy became a mascot for groups involved in radical ecological direct action.

Miffy appeared in her first TV show in 1992, called Miffy. Each episode was traditionally animated and ran for approximately five minutes.

From 2003 to 2007, Miffy and Friends aired on children's television channels such as Treehouse in Canada and Noggin in the U.S. It then moved to public television. The show added several new characters, such as Melanie's African family and the family of Boris' and Barbara's common cousin, Umik. The series was produced by Pedri Animation BV, a Dutch stop-motion animation company. It was voiced simply by a feminine storytelling narrator.

Miffy is sometimes assumed to be a Japanese character, because Sanrio's Hello Kitty, introduced in 1974, is rendered using a similar line style. The Miffy brand is popular in Japan, with strong sales of Japanese-made Miffy merchandise. In an interview for The Daily Telegraph, Bruna expressed his dislike for Hello Kitty. "'That,' he says darkly, 'is a copy [of Miffy], I think. I don't like that at all. I always think, "No, don't do that. Try to make something that you think of yourself".

On August 26, 2010, Mercis BV, representing Bruna, brought suit against Sanrio with the claim that one of Hello Kitty's companion characters, a rabbit named Cathy, infringes on the copyright and trademark of Miffy. On November 2, 2010, a Dutch court ruled against Sanrio and ordered the company to stop marketing Cathy products in Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. On June 7, 2011, following the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Sanrio and Mercis reached an out-of-court settlement requiring Sanrio to halt production of merchandise that features Cathy. Instead of continuing the court battle, the two companies announced that they would donate the legal fees to help the earthquake victims.

In Bruna's hometown, Utrecht, there is a square named after Nijntje, the Nijntjepleintje (lit: Little Nijntje Square, to retain the rhyme) and in 2006, the Centraal Museum opened a permanent exhibition, the dick bruna huis (Dick Bruna house).

Miffy celebrated her fiftieth birthday in 2005. This was marked in cities across the globe, for example, at the Manchester Art Gallery in England. She also serves a "celebrity character spokesperson" for Unicef.

Miffy's namesakes include a new species of booklouse from Peru. The insect was given the scientific name Trichadenotecnum miffy in 2008, because its epiproct, an appendage on its abdomen, resembles a small rabbit.

In July 2014, Bruna announced his retirement; the rights to the Miffy character will not be sold.

On February 16, 2017, Dick Bruna died at the age of 89.

Characters

Miffy storybooks

From Dick Bruna, Linders J, Sierman K, de Wijs I and Vrooland-Löb T. Wanders Publishers, Zwolle, 2006. (English) ISBN 90-400-8342-8 (Dutch) ISBN 90-400-9106-4