Anpanman stays at #1 over Pokemon, Mickey Mouse, Hello Kitty, One Piece; market pegged at 1.6 trillion yen

The marketing consulting company Character Databank published its annual Character Ranking 100 chart in its CharaBiz Data 2012 book in May. The chart rates the most valuable character bands in Japan, in terms of merchandising and other commercial efforts.

In 2011, these were the 20 most valuable character brands:

Rank Character 1 Soreike! Anpanman 2 Pokemon 3 Mickey Mouse 4 Hello Kitty 5 One Piece 6 Precure franchise 7 Rilakkuma 8 Winnie the Pooh 9 Super Mario Brothers 10 Snoopy (Peanuts) 11 Mobile Suit Gundam franchise 12 Kamen Rider OOO 13 Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger 14 Minnie Mouse 15 Thomas [the Tank Engine] & Friends 16 Miffy 17 Tamagotchi 18 Duffy 19 Cars 20 Kamen Rider Fourze

Anpanman has largely stayed on top for years, and the top four character brands did not change between 2010 and 2011. On the other hand, One Piece moved up from from #8 to #5 (and pushed both Precure and Winnie the Pooh one slot down). Snoopy (#10) and Gundam (#11) swapped places. The biggest mover was Pixar's Cars , which was not even in the top 100 in 2010, but rose to #19 in 2011.

In all, there are six television anime brands, six overseas animation brands, four original character brands, and three tokusatsu character brands in the top 20.

While anime aimed at children and family dominated the chart, there were five anime character brands aimed at older fans in the top 100 character rankings: Puella Magi Madoka Magica at #59, A Certain Magical Index at #63, Sengoku Basara at #80, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya at #91, and Natsume's Book of Friends at #98.

Character Databank pegged the character goods marketplace in Japan at 1.606 trillion yen (about US$20.42 billion) in 2011. That represents only a small dip from 2010's 1.6170 trillion yen (US$20.56 billion); the market has remained around the 1.6 trillion yen mark for the past decade.

The animation character segment of the marketplace totaled 604.1 billion yen (US$7.681 billion) in 2011, a dip from 2010's 642.1 billion yen (US$8.165 billion). Animation character brands represented 37.6% of the entire character goods marketplace last year.

Source: Business Media Makoto (Livedoor) via 0takomu

Update: Duffy's spelling corrected. Thanks, GokuMew2.