Button Nose

Did You Know?

• The animation production was completed in 1983, two years before the series aired.
• An English dub was produced by Saban Entertainment in 1994.
• Shirō Sasaki assisted composer Kohei Tanaka on the music.

Background

The Button Nose character was created by Masayo Hirose for Sanrio and introduced in 1978. Sanrio's profiles describe her as sweet and lively, fond of making strawberry jam and eating cookies; her nickname comes from her small, round nose. In 1983, Sanrio built a strawberry-shaped store in Tokyo based on her fictional home, originally intended as a temporary installation but kept open until 2011 due to customer demand.

Characters

Button Nose is the main protagonist, a young schoolgirl who typically wears red overalls, a striped yellow and blue long-sleeved shirt and leggings, red shoes, and two strawberry hairclips. Official art shows her as blonde with a purple dress and one hairclip, but in the series she has bright orange hair, black beady eyes, and two hairclips. She is curious, extroverted, and easily excited, rarely staying sad or startled for long. She enjoys making friends and helping her parents at their strawberry observatory on Earth. After becoming too excited by the idea of space, she boards a return spaceship with Ticktackbon, befriends Scooter and Prince Flower, and learns she is the niece of Duke Fastener. She is temporarily crowned queen of Hookland when Fastener goes on a space trip. Franklin is a rodent-like pet of debated species, pinkish purple with a mouse's ears and face but a kangaroo or aardvark body. Loyal to Button Nose, he accompanies the group on adventures and has a girlfriend, a fluffy white cat with a red bow, whom he asked out with a glass slipper. His enemy is Pierces' cat. In the English dub he is called Howie the house-mouse. Ticktackbon is a servant robot created by Duke Fastener, small and egg-shaped with a red and yellow lower half and a blue glass upper half that sparkles when he speaks. He has retractable gray arms and white gloves, and his face flashes yellow lights when startled or yelling. He wakes Button Nose and Prince Flower and ensures they do their duties, which they find slightly annoying, though they consider him a reliable friend. Despite being a robot, he wishes to have a mother. In the English dub he is known as Rudy.