Cinnamon takes down Pompompurin!

After a long and hard-fought ‘campaign,’ it was announced on Sunday (Jul. 2) that Cinnamon (sometimes also referred to as Cinnamoroll) beat out last year’s winner of the Sanrio Ranking Contest, Pompompurin to become 2017’s most popular Sanrio character.

Created in 2001, Cinnamon/Cinnamoroll is a cute puppy with ears so big they allow him to fly and a plump curled tail that is supposed to resemble a cinnamon roll. Although he is one of the more popular Sanrio characters Cinnamon had never won Sanriio’s annual character popularity poll. However, after coming in second place to Pompompurin, the golden retriever-themed beret wearing winner of both the 2015 and 2016 contests, Cinnamon has finally managed to become the new king.

This long-awaited victory was not easy though. In fact, in order to win Cinnamon recruited the help pf Jun Utahiroba, one of the members of the always irreverent Japanese rock band Golden Bomber (a.k.a. Kinbaku).

As part of this team-up with Jun Utahiroba, who has said he is a big fan of Cinnamon, the two released seven amusing videos via Sario Japan’s official YouTube channel in order to show how determined Cinnamon was to win this year’s ranking contest, and of course, to also get people to vote for the very driven puppy.

The first of these videos, which began being released in early May, was an entertaining music video which featured Cinnamon, his friends and the Golden Bomber member dancing and doing air guitar to the extremely popular Golden Bomber song “Memeshikute.”

This was followed by a video in which Cinnamon plays a super sentai (Power Rangers) type hero character called “Cinnamon White” and saves Utahiroba from some baddies.

Then came a video in which Cinnamon takes on Utahiroba in an intense soccer game, not unlike something you would see in a soccer anime like Captain Tsubasa. The video shows Cinnamon as the leader of the Cinnamon High School Soccer team in the last few moments of a tie game, in which he has to score against ace goalkeeper Jun Utahiroba.

Next came what was perhaps the most aggressive video. In this one, Cinnamon seemed to make a direct threat at last year’s winner Pompompurin. The premise for this video is that Cinnamon is going to eat an entire bucket of pudding. However, Cinnamon ends up refusing and so Utahiroba is forced to do his best and eat the mountain of pudding. Why is this a threat you say? Because Pompompurin is not only named after the Japanese word for pudding (purin), according to his backstory, he love his mother’s caramel pudding and lives near the front door of a girl’s house in a special “purin size” basket. So, in a sense, this was Cinnamon’s not so subtle way of saying “I’m going to tear you apart, eat you up, and turn you into cute puppy poop, Pompompurin!”

Cinnamon’s death threat video was followed by a quiz show style video in which Utahiroba has to answer whether he thinks that the Cinnamoroll Cafe has more than 20 items on its menu by either running through a big “X” if he thinks it doesn’t or a big “O” if he thinks that it doesn. The answer ends up being “yes” because the cafe has 37 items on its menu, but unfortunately for the J-rocker, he selects “X.”

In their second to last video, Utahiroba and Cinnamon engage in a variety of silly ‘athletic’ activities in order to keep showing how tough Cinnamon is.

And finally, in their last video Utahiroba and Cinnamon try their hand at some double dutch jump rope. Their goal? Ten complete consecutive jumps. See if they succeed below.

In the end, all of Cinnamon and Utahiroba’s hard work payed off by landing the flying plump pastry pup, 655,154 votes. Pompompurin on the other hand, finished in second place with 473,249 votes. So congratulations Cinnamon for winning the 32nd annual Sanrio Ranking Contest. Enjoy your victory, because now that you’re at the top, everyone will be trying to take you down in 2018. I’m looking at you Kirimi-chan, you anthropomorphic salmon fillet.

In the mood for more wacky Sanrio related content? Then check out the article below.

A Visit To Osaka’s Gudetama Cafe (Photos)

Source: Asahi Shinbun, Pouch

Image: かっこいい正義のヒーローになってみた編【シナモロールチャレンジ】 (Sanrio Japan Official YouTube Channel)