Cyworld

A Cyworld pixel GIF of Hamtaro

Cyworld (싸이월드; also formatted as Cy-World) is a social media website, launched in South Korea in 1999. The website had an official, albeit obscure, Hamtaro promotion at an unknown date.

Overview

The Cyworld website was comparable to MySpace in English territories, acting as a social messaging platform. The most notable feature of the service were the "mini-rooms"; these were decoratable, isometric spaces, which could be filled with "avatars" (which, in technical function, were just animated GIF files). Additionally, special decor could be purchased for the rooms (using real money); this included "brand shops" based on licensed properties, such as Looney Tunes, SpongeBob SquarePants, and several Sanrio franchises.

A Cyworld pixel GIF of Harmony

At an unknown date - somewhere between 2005 to 2009 - Cyworld opened a "brand shop" for Hamtaro (or as known in Korean, "Banga Banga Hamtori"). The artwork for the promotion was outsourced to a company known as Peachy Media. Little is actually known about the Hamtaro promotion; however, a large amount of Korean "pixel GIFs" featuring Hamtaro - over 200 in total - are known to exist. It is evident that these GIFs (or at least a large majority of them) originated from Cyworld, as evident by several factors regarding them.

About half of the pixel GIFs are on-model renditions of the characters, performing various emotions (such as eating, dancing, or being romantic). Some of the GIFs are traced over actual scenes from the anime series and movies; a few, strangely, are traced over old Hamtaro commercials, such as Hamtaro and Bijou doing the "Hamutaro Furikake" dance. The other roughly-half of the pixel GIFs, however, are considerably off-model compared to other licensed Hamtaro media. This includes showing the Ham-Hams with strange visual details (e.g. full sets of teeth or much taller bodies), and in drastically different art styles.

A "Hamtaro" pixel GIF that is traced over Ebichu

In the most inexplicable case, a few GIFs are traced over scenes from Oruchuban Ebichu; an unrelated, adult-oriented franchise featuring a hamster. Compared to the original scenes, Ebichu is given alterations to resemble Hamtaro or Bijou. In the most likely scenario, it's possible that the artists referenced Ebichu artwork by mistake, as the character is reportedly "mixed up" with Hamtaro often in South Korea.

A handful of pixel GIFs seem to have "alternate" versions, where frames of off-model expressions were removed. This may suggest that Cyworld/Peachy Media was instructed to redo some GIFs, and likely remove others entirely; presumably at the request of Shogakukan (or an affiliate of them).

Trivia

• The "Cy" in Cyworld effectively has two meanings. It is a shortening of the word "cyber", while also being a romanization of the Korean word for "relationship" ("사이", Sai).
• Many Cyworld GIFs have both a Hamtaro and a Bijou variant. For unknown reasons, Bijou often has heavy blush and lacks whiskers compared to Hamtaro.
• While there are numerous Lazuli GIFs from Cyworld, there are no known Lapis GIFs; despite the two generally being treated as a pair.

Gallery

Main article: Cyworld/Gallery