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this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2025
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chapotraphouse
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What the fuck is a labubu and why are they suddenly a thing.
its beanie babies again
Yeah, the elevator pitch kind of makes them sounds like heavily lootbox-ized beanie babies
Beanie babies for gays, apparently.
The target demographic was Chinese middle school girls up until April last year.
Huh, the only people I've heard about labubu from was western gay people, so I thought it was a gay phenomenon.
It's an inoffensive little doll thing that Chinese schoolgirls have had clipped on their school bags for a few years. Made by a Hong Kong designer based on Nordic folk creatures, wasn't really a big deal. My younger cousin in Wuhan has had one since... 2019? Sometime around then. It was in the background of WeChat calls during lockdowns in 2020, it's when I first became aware of their existence.
Last April, however, KPop star Lisa of BLACKPINK was photographed with one clipped to her handbag. This suddenly caused them to explode in popularity among Kpop stans. After a couple months, regular people discovered them and their popularity which created a feedback loop of people who don't listen to BLACKPINK buying them because they're (somewhat) adorable and popular. This led to shortages, resale markets, counterfeiting, etc.
And once again, the Kpop fans are ruining everything
It's Chinese funko pop but cuter.
are labubus popular in the west right now? they became a thing in asia like autumn last year? and had pretty much died out a few months ago. it's weird seeing a lot of references to them on western social media.
the inverse of this is i guess the teddy bear from toy story 3 which became weirdly popular like 2022/23? and whose cultural stock value still hasn't completely crashed somehow