Labubu Explainer 2025 | The Strategist

Strategist Explains

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Two Labubus, Hope (blue) and Love (red), from the Big Into Energy series.
Photo: Jen Trolio

When I first heard about Labubu, I had the same questions as everyone else: “Why is it called Labubu?” and “Is it supposed to be cute or ugly?” and “Why are people so obsessed?” But now the smirking bunny-eared creatures have hit peak notoriety, and I have seen actual Labubus out in the world: on the subway, while picking up coffee, and while shopping for pens at the Blick store in lower Manhattan. The hype is real. So since many of my friends and family members keep asking me what the deal is, and — because I write about toys — whether I can help them score one, I decided to answer those questions, and a few more, by talking to Labubu fanatics and trying to buy a real one for myself.

Labubu is an elflike vinyl and plush figure that’s sold in limited-edition blind boxes and regularly sells out within seconds. The toy’s appeal is fueled by a hard-to-explain cuteness — they’re kind of ugly, but huggable, with a devilish grin — as well as surprise and scarcity. You don’t know which Labubu you’re going to get until you open the box, and not only are the blind boxes limited, but each new series includes a “secret,” rare Labubu (with a 1 in 72 chance of discovery) that features a special color, pose, or design detail.

Another part of the draw is that they are wearable, with a hinged key ring that lets you hang them from the straps of a purse or the zipper of a backpack. Like Jellycat and other covetable bag charms, Labubus walk the line between toys and fashion, showing up on the bags (or belt loops) of stylish celebrities from Blank Pink’s Lisa to Rihanna, Dua Lipa, NBA player Dillon Brooks, Bethenny Frankel, and David Beckham.

Though the height of the craze is recent (a four-foot-tall Labubu figure just sold for $170,000 at auction in Beijing) and can be traced back to early 2024, when Lisa from Blackpink first wore one on her bag, the Labubu character has been around since 2015. That’s when artist Kasing Lung, who was born in Hong Kong but grew up in the Netherlands, published a trio of graphic novels called The Monsters Trilogy. These books and the toothy creatures within were inspired by Nordic mythology and became the basis for the Labubu toys you can buy today. Labubu is one of the titular monsters featured in the books; the others have similarly fun to say names like Zimomo, who looks a lot like Labubu but has a long, pointy tail; Pippo, who looks a bit like a papillon dog; and Tycoco, a top-hat-wearing skeleton. In 2019, Lung signed an exclusive licensing deal with Pop Mart, allowing the retailer to make and sell Labubu toys via blind box.

The medium-size plush Labubus are by far the most popular, with the last three series — Exciting Macaron, Have a Seat, and Big Into Energy — drawing tens of thousands of shoppers to the Pop Mart website and, in at least one case, crashing it. Because the dolls are so hard to get and so cherished by their owners, fans get really into accessorizing and dressing them up in different outfits, including elaborate bootleg Prada, Miu Miu, ALO, and Louis Vuitton clothing and hats that you can find on Amazon or Etsy.

Like most collectible toys gone viral, Labubu spans generations. Little kids love that they are both weird-looking and cuddly and adults love that they get to feel like a kid while unboxing them. Maria Dueñas Jacobs, founder of kid jewelry line Super Smalls, told me that her daughters, 9-year-old twins and an 11-year-old, are obsessed with Labubu. “The kids love clipping them onto backpacks, collecting different versions, and swapping with friends,” she says, adding that Labubus are “total playground currency” right now. But the majority of unboxing videos on TikTok are made by adults in their 20s and 30s. And when I browsed a handful of Canal Street souvenir shops that can sell up to a thousand “unofficial” Labubus (a.k.a. Lafufus) on a busy Saturday, shop owners told me that the biggest concentration of shoppers are tourist teenagers on school trips. One also said he sold a dozen blind boxes to a grandma in her 90s.

Pop Mart is the official retailer, with 28 retail locations and 52 “Roboshop” vending machines in the United States, but many of the Pop Mart stores don’t sell Labubu blind boxes IRL because of the chaos that drops have caused in the past. If you are shopping through Pop Mart’s website, you have two options: Have your order shipped, or pick it up in store. Kim, a collector in her 30s, has about a dozen Labubus that she has bought from Pop Mart, and says it’s easier to get one if you choose store pickup over having one shipped. “There is a separate tab for picking it up in the store and that is pulling from a different inventory. When I bought my first one, I went on the Pop Mart app and signed up for restock notifications for the stores that are closest to where I live in New York City. Then I just happened to be on my phone scrolling when I got an alert, which is how I was able to get a whole box of them that technically should have all six blind boxes in the series, but there’s also a chance of getting the secret one that’s a surprise instead,” she says. Kim’s husband also signed up for restock notifications to help boost her chances, a strategy that worked in their favor when he was on the West Coast for work and a new series dropped at midnight New York time.

Strategist writer Dominique Pariso also bought a Labubu online, but did it through Pop Mart’s Pop Now page. She used a URL trick that she learned about on TikTok to secure her doll from the Have a Seat series; it is basically a way to quickly skip through sold-out blind boxes during a launch to find ones that are still available, by changing four numbers in the middle of the URL.

On the left: A fake Exciting Macaron Labubu, a.k.a. Lafufu, and on the right: Pariso’s real Have a Seat Labubu.
Photo: Liza Corsillo

Ensito20, a die-hard collector who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, often flies to different Pop Mart retail stores for big drops; he is currently in San Francisco trying to score the Shrimp Tempura Labubu from the new Wacky Mart series. He bought his first Labubu via TikTok Live and says that it’s still the easiest way to get one. Before Pop Mart had stores in the U.S., the retailer primarily sold through TikTok, and it maintains several legitimate Pop Mart channels where you can still buy Labubus directly, including @popmart.usshop, @popmartunboxing.us, and @popmart.uslocalshop. Every Thursday, Ensito20 checks these TikTok channels to see if they are doing live drops alongside the Pop Mart website. If they are, his advice is to hold off trying to buy one right away, “because you’re going to be fighting with 20,000 people. Instead, add it to your cart and just keep checking your cart for the moment when that Labubu is randomly restocked. You’ll know because the cart will light up. So you can just be hanging out, refreshing your cart, and then you can purchase them.”

Pop Mart has released over 300 different Labubu toys since 2019, ranging in size and price from $15 for a three-inch-tall vinyl figure to $960 for a mega 31-inch vinyl figure. The most popular plush bag charm Labubus cost between $20 and $30 when you buy them from Pop Mart. There are also countless sellers on StockX and eBay charging hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars for rare Labubus. And a big part of why many people keep buying them is the hope that they will find a rare one and make money off of it: A secret Labubu like the gray one with rainbow teeth from the Big Into Energy series sells for around $500 on StockX. While that may seem ludicrous, there are many collectors who argue it’s a better (and cheaper) way to purchase a legit secret Labubu than to keep buying more blind boxes in the hopes of getting one by chance. There are also dozens of Labubu Facebook groups and Discords that caters to collectors.

The funny thing, my favorite thing, about Labubu is that the fake ones are often really easy to spot: In general, real Labubus are better quality with nicer fur, a pale peachy complexion, glossy embedded eyes, and well-blended airbrush blush on their face. They have exactly nine teeth, and a Pop Mart and a Kasing Lung logo on the bottom of their right foot. During my recent trip to Canal Street’s Lafufu sellers, the fakes were obvious in so many ways: Pop Mart was often misspelled as Pob Mart or Por Mart. “The Monsters” was also misspelled, in one case as The Monsiers — sounds French! Sometimes there would be an eyeball missing, or the face wasn’t glued on straight. But the cool thing about Lafufu culture is that lots of people are now collecting the fake ones, too, because they’re so much weirder, which kind of aligns with the mischievous personality of OG Labubu. And because there are so many fakes, my TikTok feed is as full of Lafufu unboxings as official ones.

From left: A variety of Lafufu blind boxes for sale at souvenir shops on Canal Street. Photo: Liza CorsilloPhoto: Liza Corsillo