Thieving, Reselling & Stalking: The Lengths We’re Going To For Labubus

Labubus popped up seemingly overnight. Though not a new toy, their mainstream popularity has suddenly skyrocketed. Since a friend pointed them out to me, I’ve suddenly noticed them attached to several people’s handbags on the Tube — both men and women — and even heard a story of a woman snatching and running away with a person’s Labubu on a busy road in east London. 

It isn’t easy to get your hands on one the legal way. Pop Mart, the Chinese toy company who sells the plush monsters designed by Kasing Lung, recently had to pull Labubu stock from its stores due to “safety issues” as people were fighting over them. Since being reintroduced to stores, I’ve heard anecdotally that any available stock disappears within 10 minutes of the store opening time. Although the toys are typically sold for 50 yuan in China (equivalent to just over $7), the scarcity of them has driven up prices through resellers. This month, a human-sized Labubu sold at auction for over $150,000, and a limited edition release went for over $31,000. Celebrities are getting their hands on the toys too, including actress Emma Roberts who posted an excitable unboxing video. Rihanna, Dua Lipa and Blackpink’s Lisa also all own them.

At a time when we’re constantly talking about high living costs and a poor job market, have we all gone mad? This might be another case of the lipstick effect, in a fuzzy monster form, a theory that during times of financial hardship, people seek out small inexpensive pleasures (historically, lipstick). But the kicker is that Labubus don’t feel so inexpensive anymore. The time, effort, and strategic planning to get your hands on one makes them costly in more ways than one.

“I’m honestly a little embarrassed to say this, but I’ve spent well over $500 on them,” says Ethan Melillo, 32, from Rhode Island. He’s been collecting Labubus for a month, and now owns 26. “I kept seeing them on TikTok and was honestly confused at first because I didn’t even know what they were,” he says. “They reminded me a lot of the Furby craze from the late ’90s and early 2000s. As more content creators started showing them off, I figured I might as well get one too. My first was a Coca-Cola Labubu that I bought on Pop Mart. I think what draws people into the trend is the exclusivity because it's really based on luck when you’re trying to get one from the Pop Mart website.” Melillo has never bought from a reseller, given the hiked up prices. He sticks to Pop Mart and TikTok Live events. “It’s taken a lot of effort to get the ones I want, especially since I’m not just competing with thousands of other collectors, but also with bots that snap them up just to resell.”

So why go to all that hassle for a toy? For Melillo, it’s about nostalgia. “It reminds me of collecting Pokémon cards as a kid. It’s also been a really fun thing for my wife and me to do together. We open them up as a little activity, and some of them now live on my bookshelf or pop up in my social media posts. A few are used as accessories on my wife’s purse.” He thinks it’s time to slow down on buying more, but he does have his eye on the “secret” editions from sets. Secret ones, for those of us less acquainted with the ins and outs of the Labubu world, are rare collectables usually found in blind boxes. They’re so rare, Melillo tells me, that you have a 1-in-72 chance of getting one. “But I’m not about to buy hundreds of boxes just for a shot at one. I’ll stick to the thrill of the hunt.”

Some people have been onto Labubus since before the trend took off. Hannah Gumbley, 26, from London, started collecting the toys last year after going into a Pop Mart store near the city centre for the first time. “I’ve always been a lover of trinkets and cute collectibles, collecting Sanrio and Sylvanian Families from a young age. Something about Labubus spoke to me. I think it was something about the fact they were kinda creepy and kinda cute that I loved,” Gumbley says. She couldn’t buy one that day as they were sold out, so she went to eBay. “Naively, I didn’t realize at the time that even then there was a huge market of “lafufus” [fake versions] and accidentally bought one. Since then I have learnt my lesson and only brought them from Pop Mart stores.” 

Now, her collection stands at 12, including some special editions. They hang from her bags, and she picks which one to use so it will match her outfit. It’s about self-expression. In total, she’s spent over £200 ($275) on them, avoiding reseller prices. “When I first started collecting they were much easier to get a hold of but since the boom I haven’t been able to get my hands on any, only getting the Big Into Energy series this week because my friend had won the raffle and we shared a box,” Gumbley says. She has more special editions and secret ones on her shopping list, including the Singapore exclusive Hide and Seek mermaid, the Mokoko Close to Sweet, and the Wacky Mart Tempura Prawn. “A must!!,” she adds. “I think my hunt to complete my Labubu collection will never be finalized.”

For the beginner collector, there are plenty of lafufus to avoid. Emmeline Roane, 30, from Philadelphia, bought her first legit one in May, then a second in June. She already collected toys and when she saw the hype on social media around Labubus, she knew there had to be a new branch to her toy collection. The first one cost $60 (bought in a mall in San Francisco's Japantown) and the second was $45 (found on Facebook from a seller in Philadelphia). “It’s a bit of a challenge to find real ones. Resellers buy them up and resell them for more via Facebook Marketplace or some stores in Chinatown [in Philadelphia] sell them,” Roane says. Despite that, it’s still fun for her. “I love that when I wear them out, people have so many questions about them and say it makes them feel more inclined to accessorize with funky toys.” However, Roane won’t be buying any more. Two is enough as she tends to collect one to three of a toy type. Her advice for people wanting to avoid fakes is to pay attention to whether they’re being sold out of the box. “But sometimes they’re made to look like real ones in the box, too. It’s a gamble if you don’t know how to authenticate them. I check by using my Pop Mart app and scanning the QR code on the box.”

Not everyone is out to collect them for keeps, though. Kelly, 32, from Macao, has been reselling Labubus since the start of this year. Inspiration struck after she waited in a long queue for them at a pop-up store with friends. “I realized that I need to queue for that stuff! So I guess, if I already queued for my friend, why don’t I get more and sell to others who didn’t come and queue? One of my friends was doing this already, so we established a ‘partnership’. She is the one to get customers online, and I’m the one who queues and gets the Labubus.” The duo resell them on Rednote, Xianyu (a secondhand platform in China) and Carousel (in Hong Kong). For the latest Labubu series, people are willing to pay more than double their cost, she says, and because she sells them in a boxset, people have a chance at getting a “secret” one, which is more expensive. This means she can up the price on her boxsets. In terms of pounds, she can often make as much as $140 in profit from one sale, especially if it’s a rare edition. It’s getting hard for her to continue selling so much because of how difficult it is now, compared with the start of the year, to buy them. “It’s time-consuming, and most of the time when I get to the store, there is already a long queue or products are sold out.” Kelly has resorted to Pop Mart’s “online lucky draw”. She has 10 accounts to maximize her chances of winning. 

How long we’ll care about Labubus for remains to be seen, but for now, the craze is full-throttle. Guess what: After starting this piece thinking the whole thing was ridiculous, I now kind of want one, too.