How Labubu’s monster summer gave it a shot at Minions-like success

FastCompany: With big eyes, sharp teeth, and a furry body with rabbitlike ears, Labubu—a character in the Chinese retailer Pop Mart’s The Monsters collection , based on Nordic folklore—ruled the summer of 2025. It adorned millions of belts and bags and created an entire mini-economy of customization around it. The toy’s popularity helped Pop Mart’s 2025 revenue hit $5.1 billion, a 184% year-over-year jump. The Monsters brought in $2.1 billion globally in 2025, with North America as Pop Mart’s largest growth market. Interest in the character—already well known in Asia—grew in the U.S.

thanks to celebrities and collectors on social media, amid the opening of 22 Pop Mart stores in six months. Then Pop Mart launched a new line of tie-dye Labubus, and consumers went wild. A year later, some key people look back on Labubu mania. Emily Brough, Pop Mart head of IP licensing, the Americas: It had been seven or eight months since there had been a new Labubu series on the market, and within that time we’d really seen the excitement for the character grow. It had a big inflection point with the Big Into Energy launch in April 2025. [After that,] we were constantly trying to keep up with demand.

I don’t think we were ever able to fully catch up in those first couple of months. [Illustration: Jannik Stegen ] Andrew Zheng, Labubu collector: I found out about Labubus through a friend who told me they were hard to get in China and hadn’t been widely available in the U.S. yet—and that spurred my competitive energy. When I went to China to visit family last year, I made it my mission to hunt for a Labubu. Right now, I physically don’t know how many I have—I can count 33 right in front of me.

Once he found a Labubu, Zheng joined legions of newly minted collectors posting videos—from unboxings to guides on upcoming product series—on social media. Zheng: I really tapped into demand for newscasting and unboxings to grow my initial following. I tried to go for a more information perspective at first, because people were wondering about the difference between a real and fake Labubu and when they drop. Brough: Being so new in market at that point, it was heartening to see the response. Every day we saw a new way that people were interacting with the character, a new level of excitement that we just wouldn’t have anticipated before.

By August, Labubu was everywhere—and so were unofficial versions. Some were cheap counterfeits; others were elevated riffs. Kerin Rose Gold made bedazzled, 3D printed figures resembling Labubu for the tennis player Naomi Osaka. Every night she played at the U.S. Open, Osaka sported a different figure—each with a punny name inspired by a tennis great. [Illustration: Jannik Stegen ] Kerin Rose Gold, artist and designer: This joke is tired, but I call them LaBlingBlings because I don’t want to get La-sue-sued. But they are original art objects. [For the first Osaka piece] I came up with the name Billie Jean Bling.

Then she held it up after she won her first match, and it was like taking a rocket and putting nitrous in the rocket. I was smart enough to know, “You don’t need to sleep this week; you’re just going to design these little creatures.” Since last summer, Labubu has been part of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and Sony has tapped the director Paul King (whose credits include Paddington and Wonka) for a Labubu movie. But Labubu sales growth has slowed from 120% year over year in January to 40% in February, according to Bloomberg Second Measure. Pop Mart and fans are taking this as an opportunity to get deeper into its world of characters.

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The article discusses a significant brand's rise in popularity and its implications for growth strategies, making it relevant and impactful for brand professionals, while the concepts presented are somewhat novel but not entirely groundbreaking.