On 30 January 2013, a feature-length film, Miffy the Movie, was released in theaters and stars Eva Poppink in the title role.
Miffy was created in 1953 after Bruna had been telling his one-year-old son, Sierk, stories about a little rabbit they had seen earlier in the dunes,[1] while on holiday at Egmond aan Zee.
At first Miffy looked like a toy animal with floppy ears, but by 1963, her design was changed to her current incarnation, a stylized form of a rabbit.
Bruna chose to only use black, white, the primary colours (red, yellow, and blue), green, orange, brown, and grey.
It is his use of primarily primary colors that makes Miffy instantly recognisable, and also popular with preschoolers, because of her bright and intense simplistic colours.
In 1997, he was awarded the Silver Slate for Dear Grandma Bunny, a book where Miffy's grandmother was sick and died.
In the early 1990s, an image of Miffy holding an adjustable spanner coyly behind her back appeared on flyers produced by people taking direct action against the UK government's road building program.
The show aired in the Netherlands on KRO, in the United Kingdom on ITV, in Canada on TVOntario in Australia on ABC, and in the USA on Cartoon Network's Small World block with VHS releases from Geneon USA, episodes of the show were later included as Bonus Features on Miffy and Friends DVDs.
Miffy is sometimes assumed to be a Japanese character, because Sanrio's Hello Kitty, introduced in 1974, is rendered using a similar line style.
[7] In addition, on 26 August 2010, Mercis BV, representing Bruna, brought suit against Sanrio with the claim that one of Hello Kitty's companion characters, a rabbit named Cathy, infringes on the copyright and trademark of Miffy.
[8] On 2 November 2010, a Dutch court ruled against Sanrio and ordered the company to stop marketing Cathy products in Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.
The insect was given the scientific name Trichadenotecnum miffy in 2008, because its epiproct, an appendage on its abdomen, resembles a small rabbit.
In December 2022, Tommy Hilfiger announced its new collection with Miffy[22] as the main attraction for the new partnership in celebration of the Lunar New Year of the Rabbit.