The Labubu hype is done.
For the time being, Labubu bag charms will still be adorning the straps of Baggu purses and Trader Joe’s totes, but the days of hundred-dollar resales and brawls outside Pop Marts are over. At least a few other people have sensed it, including very online Business Insider correspondent Katie Notopoulos. The Labububble has laburst.
Despite being on track to sell $1 billion of these monsters, Labubu vendor Pop Mart’s stock dropped by $13 billion after an all-time high in late August. After peaking in July, Google searches for Labubu have declined to pre-summer levels. Most importantly, my friend Angela Bautista, a dedicated, pre-craze Labubu enthusiast, said so.
“I think a lot of it has died down,” she told me. Bautista thinks that Labubu resale prices have declined, in part, due to increased availability. “They’re still a popular character, but, I think, only for the people who actually want them.”
There are a few reasons for this: Between every pop culture IP and high-fashion designer, we’ve reached total bag charm saturation, for one. For two, even the biggest obsessives have grown weary of dedicating so much time and money to these tchotchkes, which have only gotten more expensive thanks to tariffs. The whole Satanic panic around Labubus being vessels for demons probably hasn’t helped things. On an existential level, the little treat industrial complex that makes up the Pop Mart business model may not be enough to distract us from the atrocities, political violence, censorship, unrest, and general feeling of doom in the pit of our collective stomach.
None of this is ideal news for the two-story Union Square Pop Mart currently in its soft opening phase. (They are still not selling the Labubu plushies.) The slow decline of Pop Mart’s flagship product may take the wind out of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s positioning of the Pop Mart opening as a so back! moment for downtown. But there is a silver lining: There are other quirky cute figurines and collectibles poised to take Labubu’s throne, even if they may not ever reach the heights of their snaggle-toothed brethren. The churn of late-stage capitalism demands it.
Last week, I stopped by the Pop Mart to scope out the future of the tchotchke economy for myself. Without Labubus in stock, tourists and Labubu-curious casuals walked in and promptly walked out emptyhanded. Not a great sign. But among the crowd of devotees, most of whom appeared to be under the age of 25, I found some clues.
The two big factors for whatever’s up next are cuteness and utility.
Labubus are weird-cute, like a hairless cat or Courage the dog. But the pendulum, it seems, is shifting back into total cuteness, the inverse of the pivot from last year’s Sonny Angels into Labubus this year. People seem to also want more use out of their silly little toys. They don’t just want figurines gathering dust, or plushies merely hanging off of belt loops and purses. At the Pop Mart store, there were figurines that doubled as iPhone charging cables and AirPod cases; their website sells handheld mirrors, portable fans, and car fresheners that all bear the likeness of some cute creature.
A Pop Mart worker suggested to me that the next big thing might be Skullpanda — pale, glassy-eyed figurines that look a bit like gothic, Chibi-fied Bratz dolls. The shop sold out of the latest bag charm collection, called You Found Me, in two days, she told me.
Nicholas Noe, a 19-year-old Bay Area resident at the shop, is partial to Hirono, a cherubic boy with a sad countenance. (I have also grown fond of Hirono in the past couple of months; I walked away from my trip to the shop with a figurine, my first-ever Pop Mart buy.)
“Less people are talking about Labubus because there’s new obsessions,” Noe explained. “The Labubu era is slowly coming to a close.”
There are other contenders, like Crybaby and Dimoo and Hacipupu. Workers were unpacking large boxes of these toys on the Pop Mart floor, a possible sign of their future viability.
But the biggest indication is Google searches in Asia (and Southeast Asia, in particular). Remember that Labubus, a Chinese export from a Hong Kong artist, blew up in large part because of its adoption by Thai K-pop idol Lisa and the broader Thai public. In the Philippines, Hirono is starting to overtake Labubu in Google searches. In Brunei and Thailand, Crybaby and Skullpanda are gaining traction, while Crybaby has fully overtaken Labubu in terms of popularity.
When historians look back on this era, Labubus will be seen as the gateway into this weird, wild universe of collectible plushes and figurines, but not the be-all-end-all of the trend. Labubus walked so these other creatures could run.
Nothing will really replace the lightning-in-a-bottle hype circle of Labubus, as of yet, but don’t be surprised if a Hirono or Crybaby enters your universe in the next year or so. We all could use a new distraction.
