Under the wave of nostalgic and retro aesthetics, many classic animation IPs have reborn. The domestic "Cauliba", "Black Cat Sheriff", "Haier Brothers", and the Japanese "Three Sisters of Cat Eyes", "Digimon" and "Pokemon" have all become popular again in the Internet era.

Under the wave of nostalgic and retro aesthetics, many classic animation IPs have reborn. The domestic "Cauliwa", "Black Cat Sheriff", " Haier Brothers ", and the Japanese " Cat Eye Three Sisters ", "Digimon" and "Pokemon" have all become popular again in the Internet era.

However, the most frequent anime image born in the 1980s and 1990s was not the classic big ip that everyone knew, but a cartoon character that most people have never seen on TV.

classic anime characters are all familiar with people through their works, but this character takes a different approach. At that time, almost all the children knew him and even met him day by day, but few people have seen works about him. We are still familiar with him and are unfamiliar with him until we grow up.

If I ask me to give some tips to describe him, I can only say that he is a little Japanese with a "Mediterranean" hairstyle. By this time many older children can guess that is the mysterious childhood nightmare of our life experience - Watermelon Taro.

Children's Nightmare

Dark fairy tales like "Rude's Cube Building" are the shadow of childhood for many older children, but they are far less terrifying than the silly image of Watermelon Taro. is too horrible because of the scene where the fat man appears in the "Mediterranean" is too horrible.

He appeared on the field grid, big grass, pencil sharpener, pencil case and colored pen of primary and secondary school students in that era, like the "virus spread", and everyone has known about Watermelon Taro since then.

I believe most people once thought that Watermelon Taro was just imprinted on various stationery as an image, and few people knew that it was actually a popular brand.

In 1989, Fujian Province actively attracted investment in , and attracted Wang Xinfu, the boss from Taiwan. His new generation industrial Co., Ltd. built the factory on the land in Fuzhou. As early as 1970, the new generation had already started to produce trendy stationery. The new generation who had just arrived in the mainland had not yet realized the huge market for hundreds of millions of people. They were just taking orders in Taiwan and producing in mainland China.

It was not until Wang Xinfu received a stationery production order from mainland China that he knew which strait the company's future belongs to. After two or three years of production in mainland China, the new generation felt that the time was ripe, so they started to build their own brand.

1994, Watermelon Taro emerged and became a hit. He quickly became the top star in the mainland stationery industry and was once rated as the "Top Ten Stationery Brands in China". Wang Xinfu himself also won the honorary title of "Enlightenment of Childhood Intention".

The main focus of the new generation of stationery is not on the pen, so it did not form a head-on competition with brands such as Baixue and Zhencai at that time. The dominant Morning Light did not take root until 1999.

The new generation of stationery products, especially the Watermelon Taro series, target customers, are very distinctive, that is, children, and even high school students are not within their considerations. So all the stationery of Huala Taro is colorful, simple and cute.

How can stationery such as a childlike design not be popular? Why don’t the kids like it? , I really don’t like it very much. is the irresponsible stream of consciousness conclusion that I came up through superficial memories and investigations.

I clearly remember that the image of Watermelon Taro was dull and boring in the eyes of the children at that time. First of all, he was not a hot anime character in China. The children didn’t know anything except that he was a “Mediterranean”. Secondly, his frequency of appearance on stationery was too high, which led to the fact that Hualabataro was tied to the study. If this still makes the primary school students flock to it, it would be a big score.

Since consumers don’t like it, why is “watermelon Taro” so popular? The answer to the question

should be found in the first half of the sentence, because the consumers of children's stationery are actually parents.

Watermelon Taro from brand image, character image, and stationery design, it perfectly fits parents' imagination of their children's use of stationery, childish, gorgeous, practical, cheap and harmless.I clearly remember that the image that was loved by children in the stationery industry in the early 21st century was rogue rabbit , but the word "rogue" is so kind to parents. It is like a fool to compete with Xigua Taro.

However, Watermelon Taro is far from being boring in the eyes of children. At that time, he had a trump card product that children talked about - Watermelon Taro oil pastel and watercolor pen. The pen cap with all threads embedded in is too many memories. I don’t know how many artistic bacteria were released in , and how many 2D turtles have been contributed to our fishing time.

What's more valuable is that Yukataro launched the first batch of "house-style" pencil sharpeners in China. This thing not only liberates parents' hands, but also saves them from their worries. A pencil is easy to get a knife, and parents always have to do it themselves out of worry. The old-fashioned pencil sharpener is easy to sharpen the pencil, which is not only unsafe but also requires pencil.

Since the Watermelon Taro "room-style" pencil sharpener, "Mom no longer has to worry about my study", the children just shake the handle out of Mars, and the mothers have rested their worries.

After dominating the stationery market, Wang Xinfu immediately expanded the influence of this "Mediterranean" fat man to other fields and established the Watermelon Children's Clothing brand. He accidentally became "the top ten most popular children's clothing brands among Chinese consumers."

Time has passed, and the pencil case has long been useless, and the pencil children are also fascinated by automatic. The fake products are everywhere in the watermelon Taro has been defeated by many big brands such as Chenguang, Deli . But classic products always have to look a bit classic. When you open Taobao, Watermelon Taro's watercolor pens still sell well.

Mysterious Life Experience

2022, most of the older children who came from the 1980s and 1990s still don’t know where Xigua Taro came from, so they can only analyze from their names that he is a Japanese.

When I was a child, I had a little vague understanding of Watermelon Taro, but even if I read "00,000 Why ", you can't find the complete image of Watermelon Taro. How unpopular is this image? With today's Internet, it is difficult to give a detailed description of the origin and image of Watermelon Taro.

My vague understanding comes from the VCD disc I used to watch in my childhood. A Taiwanese comic-adapted magic film "New Momotaro" released in 1987, which was released in 1987. At that time, I knew it had something to do with Xigua Taro when I heard the name. As expected, this stupid character appeared in the movie. Now I don’t know how many people I can satisfy when watching this movie curiosity . In the movie, Gua Taro is an adult fat man and has repeatedly staged greasy kiss scenes. The target is the princess that the protagonist group wants to save, which once made us confused about Gua Taro’s understanding.

older friends may have watched the Japanese anime "The Legend of Momotaro" and "The Legend of Momotaro" adapted from FC games. The first "The Legend of Momotaro" was well-known in China in the 1990s, telling the story of the protagonist Momotaro relies on his skills and mechas and good friends to kill demons. However, this work is still very unpopular compared with phenomenal animes such as "Saint Seiya", "Saint Moon", "Dragon Ball", "Football Boy", and "Slam Dunk" of the same era.

The image of Water Taro appears in both works. The "Mediterranean" pot cover is wearing a big red bellyband, which is almost the same as the Water Taro on the stationery, except that his original name is Jin Taro, and he is a strange prodigy who regards wealth as his life.

Friends who know Japanese culture know that Momotaro's story is a household name in Japan. The old couple in the village picked up a big peach by the river. When they went home to cut it, it turned out to be a living doll. The old couple treated him as their own child (the original version was the product of the old couple becoming young and applauding after eating peaches). They never thought that Momotaro would grow into a strong boy in a few days.

The main storyline revolves around Momotaro leading a dog, a monkey and a pheasant to punish monsters on the Devil's Island. Such a team is somewhat similar to our "Journey to the West". There is actually no character from Kane Taro in this story, but Kane Taro is not an original FC game and anime. Both the game and anime integrate Japanese folklore characters.

Kintaro is the childhood name of Sakata Kintoshi, one of the four kings of Rai Guang. He is extremely powerful in legend and can conquer a bear as a mount. Later, he became a retainer of the general Genna Rai Guang, and joined him in confronting Shuitun Boy . In "Broad Meaningful Stories of the Stories of Thunder", the old woman in the Yamakura dreamed of a dragon, so she got pregnant with Kane Taro, which shows how deeply the Japanese folk stories are influenced by Chinese culture. Classic images such as

are constantly given new stories and characteristics in various cultural works, and eventually spread to Taiwan to become the fusion of the remaining culture of the Japanese occupation era and the local culture of Taiwan.

If we combine the image of Watermelon Taro in legends, anime and movies, , then Watermelon Taro on our stationery should be a "Mediterranean" chaebol who is brothers and sisters with animals in the mountain, carrying a big axe, extremely powerful, greedy for money and lust, riding a big black bear, and shouldering justice.

This way, the image of Watermelon Taro is much more rebellious than the rogue rabbit. It is far from being as silly and harmless as the ones drawn on the stationery.

Of course, the squinting and smiling watermelon Taro on the stationery, whether we liked it or not when we were young, carries our happiest time, about old-fashioned desks with secrets, big notes about copying texts, and pencil cases with hidden toys. When we take out old watermelon Taro watercolor pens from our home, we can remember our parents who just got off work carrying a hot fried chicken leg , and happily took out their simple but brand new, 36-color love from their bag.

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