The logo helped Playboy’s business expand globally, and generates billions of dollars in annual sales through licensing for retail, foods and beverages, events, and entertainment venues. In fact, Playboy-branded products generated more than US$1 billion in consumer sales across China’s e-commerce platforms in 2020, accounting for 27 per cent of the company’s total revenue.
The brand’s fame in China has also led to lawsuits against copycats, such as a 2013 case where Playboy demanded US$68,000 and a public apology from three Chinese companies for producing shirts with a similar icon.
In contrast to Playboy’s wink-wink-nudge-nudge focus on the rabbit’s promiscuity, the animal symbolises longevity, peace and prosperity in Chinese and Asian cultures. Therefore it tends to be associated with less risqué businesses, and it has a long history as a brand symbol.
The first known rabbit logo in China dates back to the Song dynasty, between the 10th to 13th centuries. One of the first advertising handbills printed during this period promoted a sewing-needle shop, with a logo featuring a white rabbit using a mortar and pestle.
The logo alludes to a Chinese poem that states, “if you work at it hard enough, you can grind an iron pestle into a needle”, expressing the shop owner’s dedication to producing high-quality needles.
Here are five modern-day brands that are active in Asia and make use of bunny-themed branding.
White Rabbit
White Rabbit milk candy is one of China’s most popular cultural exports. However, the treat started out with a different name and mascot entirely.
After the Chinese Communist Party’s victory in the Chinese civil war, ownership of the brand was transferred to the state-owned Guan Sheng Yuan Food, the current owner. And as Mickey Mouse was perceived as a Western influence, the company changed the name from ABC Mickey Mouse Sweets to White Rabbit in 1959, with the now recognisable blue and white bunny replacing the world’s most famous mouse.
The candy became so iconic that Premier Zhou Enlai gave US president Richard Nixon White Rabbit candies as a gift when he visited China in 1972.
Today, the brand is exported to more than 40 countries, and its popularity has extended beyond the candy itself. In 2011, US sportswear giant Nike released a limited-edition Air Force 1 Supreme Low Year of the Rabbit shoe inspired by the iconic sweet. And White Rabbit flavoured ice lollies went viral in Hong Kong after they first hit the market in 2022.Dehua Tubao New Decoration Material
Founded in 1992, Dehua Tubao New Decoration Material provides interior-decoration materials in China, focusing on the manufacture of flooring, decorative panels and engineered wood.
The literal translation of its Chinese name “Tubao” means “bunny”, and its logo features a plucky green cartoon rabbit.
With Zhejiang as its main industrial base, Dehua Tubao has industrial clusters in Jiangsu, Jiangxi, and other areas in China. Its products are exported to 28 countries and regions around the world, and it has more than 1,700 sales outlets in China. The company listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2005.
Tubao’s stock price surged 49 per cent in January, perhaps as it is the only company listed in the A-share market with a rabbit in its logo and name.
Hyundai Pharmaceutical
First established as a company producing disinfection chemicals in 1965, Hyundai Pharmaceutical is a South Korean company that manufactures and distributes pharmaceutical products, health food and medical devices.
Since 1973, its logo has been a stylised rabbit, derived from its popular liquid painkiller that also had a hare as its mascot.
The company reached record-high sales of 162.7 billion won (US$130.9 million) in the last financial year, up 16.4 per cent from 2021.
The company listed on the South Korean stock exchange in 1978. So far, its share price has not increased significantly in the run-up to the Year of the Rabbit.
Despite its name, Hyundai Pharmaceutical has no relationship with the South Korean automobile conglomerate Hyundai Motor.
SSP
With over 250 years of history dating back to 1765, Japan’s SSP produces and distributes pharmaceutical drugs, quasi-pharmaceutical drugs, cosmetics and foods. It is best known for its painkiller tablet EVE, first released in 1985.
Its logo – a white rabbit hopping in a green and blue background – originates with the Japanese mythology of Ōkuninushi-no-mikoto – ‘great lord of the land’ – a story about treating a wounded white rabbit with a cotton cattail.
The company says the rabbit’s white fur represents cleanliness and its leap shows the company’s dynamism.
Tokki Soju
Tokki Soju is one of the few American brands selling soju, a traditional Korean spirit made from rice.
First established in 2016 in Brooklyn, New York, it expanded its business to Asia in 2020, opening a distillery in Chungju, South Korea. The company last year launched Tokki Global, an arm for global expansion and distribution.
The brand takes its name from the Korean word for rabbit, because master distiller and founder Brandon Hill first learned how to make soju in South Korea in 2011 – the previous Year of the Rabbit.
The company’s products include three types of soju with rabbit art on the bottles, as well as other spirits such as gin and vodka.
