There are several meanings to ‘mang’ in Korean. It can translate as ‘a pony’, ‘to fail’, and it’s the latter part of the word ‘hope’ (huimang). Jin was drawing cute alpaca doodles for years before this collaboration, so he was excited to finally bring one to life. His limbs can bend and stretch into weird lengths and shapes. He’s a character that V has been drawing for some time, and he wanted the character to be more unique than cute, as he personally loves unique characters. Suga’s drawing Shooky is a cookie with a badass attitude. He’s best friends with Cooky, and hates milk. The grey and white character Van – created by LINE Friends’ designers – is a space robot that protects BT21, and it’s said to represent ARMY.

During the initial sketching period, Suga drew his dog, Holly, but it looked too similar to other characters, so he drew lots of different expressions inspired by Holly instead. It was inspired by interviews with BTS about what kind of characters they wanted to create with LINE. The group name BT21 was inspired by a comment from Suga, who thought the characters should represent both BTS and the 21st century, so they would live for the next 100 years.He also wanted Cooky to always have a chocolate chip cookie, which inspired the next character, Shooky.

The animal that goes best with BTS is a puppy,’ he said in the BT21 making of videos. ‘We love to hang out, and we’re active, which reminds people of puppies.’ Cooky, created by Jungkook, is a rabbit with attitude. He works out a lot and imagines that he transforms into a huge muscle man when he gets angry.