If you haven’t heard of Labubu, there is a couple of hints about your demographic profile. You’re more likely to be older, a male and you’re less likely to be Asian. Of course, this is a gross generalisation as the phenomenon has been going on around the world for the last few years.
So, what is Labubu?
Labubu is a collection of plush toy monster elves, created by Kasing Lung – a designer based in the Netherlands. They are not just the huggable plush toys either. There are plush toy key chains that you can clip on your handbags, as well as collectable figurines that are sold as part of themes or series. If you’re wondering why on earth sophisticated ladies would happily snap on a Labubu doll on their Birkin or their LV, well, read on …
Labubu products are sold exclusively at Pop Mart, a Chinese retailer chain that is now established in many countries and has also spawned secondary market in eBay and other online sites. You are probably none the wiser on how a series of monster toys become a global phenomenon. The catalyst happened in April 2024, when a member of a massive K-Pop group, Blackpink was seen with a Labubu keychain on her bag. Because of the rising interest in K-Pop music and the global reach, Labubu ended up being rocketed across the world. Earlier in June, a 131cm Labubu doll was sold for over US$ 150,000 in a Chinese auction house – the most expensive one, so far. You often find crowds and queues in every Pop Mart store globally – and there are reports that customers fight over Labubu dolls.
What’s the secret sauce of the phenomenon? Labubu toys and keychains are sold in blind boxes. You don’t know which Labubu you’ll get when you buy – giving you a rush of dopamine when you do the unboxing. Dopamine is a hormone and a chemical messenger that plays an important role in the brain’s reward system, contributing to the feelings of pleasure, motivation, and satisfaction.
During a visit to Jakarta, Indonesia earlier this month, I bought one out of curiosity. As mentioned previously, there are many specific Labubu series, including collaborations with brands, pop groups, and museums. The Lazy Yoga series were available when I visited the store – and there are 10 possible figurines that you can get from this collection, with one secret and special Labubu that you get if you’re lucky. I got the one titled “Confident” – that I will put on my desk at work, next to my Tintin, Captain Haddock, and Le Petit Prince figurines.
Let’s dissect why Labubus are so popular.
Labubu toys are not the only blind box purchases in Pop Mart and other similar retail chains. There are many more characters and series, including Disney’s Stitch, Sonny Angel, and Hello Kitty. The appeal in buying blind boxed toys is the element of surprise and variability when you uncover the content. It’s the rush of dopamine that I mentioned earlier. This is not a new tactic – those who grew up in the 1980’s may still remember the Panini stickers. You would buy the album that is attached to a specific theme – for example, the FIFA World Cup or Christopher Columbus’ voyage. You would then buy their stickers that were sold in blind packs. It was satisfying to get a sticker that would complete a page or a section of the album.
This approach is called Variable Reward by Nir Eyal in his book “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products” in 2014. In his book, he puts forward the concept that brands can leverage the dopamine hit in our brain, when they provide products with reward variability. Although this is not based on peer-reviewed research publication, the foundational theory can be found in Skinner’s (infamous) experiments and his theory of Operant Conditioning (e.g., The Behavior of Organisms in 1938), where he examined rats that would stay and repeatedly hit the lever for food that were released as-if randomly.
This is why we love to compare the jokes and little knick-knacks in our Christmas poppers, and why game shows with a level of random variability like The Tipping Point remain popular. Growing up with five sisters in the household in Indonesia, my first introduction to variable reward is rushing to open the box of sanitary napkins that my sisters bought when I was a small boy. The brand used to put different kinds of money box in each pack – similar to the giveaway toys in cereal boxes in many countries. We still see the evidence of this tactic when supermarket chains promote collectable cards, stickers, and figurines in blind packs when the shopping amount exceeds the set threshold – complete with the promise for some rare exclusive packs with a special prize for some lucky shoppers.
Essentially, this is what the creators and retail chains want to manipulate – the sense of excitement when you open your blind box so you can complete your sets, and being hopeful that you will be the lucky person to find and unbox the special secret item. In a way, this is similar to the gamblers sitting and pulling the levers, hoping that they would be lucky enough to hit the jackpot. The machine is clever enough to manipulate the gambler so they would get enough dopamine hit, whilst enticing them to keep on going for the possibility of getting the grand prize.
Now, the million-dollar question. Would the tactic make you more likely to be more loyal to the brand?
The answer is more likely to be no. To get the answer, we return to the research in gambling. In a study by Sagoe, et al. in 2018, they studied over 93,000 individual gamblers in Norway and how they selected the gambling venue (by categorising the venue based on the number of terminals). They discovered that around half of the sample only gambled in one category (52.5%), with the rest moving around multiple categories. There were presumably different venues that belong to one category – further watering down that gamblers would be loyal to a specific venue.
Similarly for brands, having marketing tactics that take advantage of dopamine hits would only satisfy the hit, hypothetically with no long term effects on loyalty. After Labubu and Sonny Angel, there will be popular future iterations of blind box toys and purchases – waiting for the next celebrity, pop star, or pop group that would propel the craze. Those who love collecting stickers and figurines from different supermarket chains would also still happily migrate around to follow whatever campaigns that are on at the moment — feeding the dopamine addiction and the short term sales spikes, and less about brand building.