Sanrio Boys (サンリオ男子) is a Japanese media franchise created by Sanrio in November 2015. The Sanrio Boys were conceptualized as a social media project to promote merchandise for Sanrio's best-selling characters. Due to its popularity, it grew to have its own merchandise line, a manga series, a series of character drama CDs, a 2016 smartphone game for iOS and Android, and an anime television series by Pierrot aired from January to March 2018.
Background
The Sanrio Boys were created by Sanrio in November 2015 to promote merchandise for their best-selling characters on social media, a strategy of which has been compared to Twitter accounts run by characters from Uta no Prince-sama.[3] The Sanrio Boys originally consisted of five characters, but has since then expanded to seven.[4] The characters were so well-received that they received their own line of character merchandise starting in June 2016.[5]