Here’s Why Kirby Used To Look Angry On Western Boxart

Longtime fans are likely familiar with the meme of American Kirby, which spawned because Nintendo used to always give Kirby an angry expression on US boxart for his games, even if he looked happy on the original Japanese boxart.

Speaking to Polygon, former Nintendo localization director Leslie Swan revealed that it was mostly done to make Kirby easier to market to teen audiences in the US, remarking that he is meant to look “determined” not necessarily angry. Cute characters tended to be more popular with all ages in Japan, but the team felt that boys who play videogames in the US preferred “tougher” characters.

“Cute, sweet characters are popular among people of all ages in Japan. In the U.S., though, tween and teen boys tend to be drawn to tougher characters. We all thought the Kirby game mechanic was a ton of fun, and we wanted Kirby to reach the broadest audience possible. At Nintendo, we embraced the idea of the little guy facing the biggest, baddest enemies and somehow, with the player in control, triumphing. Think Link versus Ganon. Kirby had many cool transformations in the game and could be very tough. We thought he should be portrayed as a fierce, tenacious little pink puffball. I don’t think we ever thought of the artwork as angry so much as determined against all odds.”

“In the early days there weren’t very many young girls playing video games,” says Swan. “A puffy pink character for boys who are trying to be cool just wasn’t going to get the sales that everybody wanted. […] Back then when we were first launching those games, it was on the Game Boy, black and white, right? So we didn’t care about the color. And then it was like, OK, now we have this pink puffy character. So how are we going to position the character to be more appealing?”

Former Nintendo Minute host Krysta Yang also commented that this stance was similar when she was still at the company, with Nintendo trying to avoid being labelled as being too “kiddie”.

“There was certainly a period of time for Nintendo, and even gaming in general, to have a more adult/cool factor. […] Having a game that was labeled ‘kiddie’ was really a curse. Nintendo still needed to focus on its kid audience, but there was a shift in trying to make its characters more broadly appealing to a wider audience. One example is the marketing for the Nintendo DS’ Kirby Super Star Ultra [in 2008]: The marketing focused on making Kirby a more appealing character, especially for boys, so the marketing tagline was ‘Super Tuff Pink Puff.’

“There was a conscious effort from the marketing side to make Kirby seem tougher and to focus more on the game’s combat so Kirby [wasn’t] seen as something just for young kids, it certainly was a bit of a departure from smiling happy cute Kirby, but it also didn’t seem totally out of place since Kirby games are very action-based!”

So far, it seems Nintendo has stopped trying to hard to pushing Kirby to look “cool”, and he has been allowed to keep his smile on most regional boxarts for his games.

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