After Labubu: Pop Mart's next wave

In the first half of 2025, a single character family accounted for roughly a third of Pop Mart's revenue, close to five billion yuan. That family is called The Monsters, and the world knows it through its most famous member: Labubu, the nine-toothed elf created by a Hong Kong illustrator for a children's picture book.

No consumer goods company sleeps well with that level of concentration. A fashion passes, a character tires, a market turns, and nothing is left. Pop Mart knows this better than most, because it has already been through the cycle once: before Labubu its flagship character was Molly, and Molly's relative decline between 2020 and 2022 seriously worried analysts. The group's strategy over the past eighteen months therefore reads in one direction: push other names, fast, and turn them into standalone brands. Three are already succeeding.

What Pop Mart actually sells#

The group founded in Beijing in 2010 by Wang Ning and listed in Hong Kong since December 2020 is neither a toy manufacturer nor a creative studio. It is an aggregator of artists.

The model is to spot an independent illustrator or sculptor, sign an exclusive contract with royalties, then provide industrialisation, worldwide distribution and marketing. The artist keeps their name and their graphic signature; Pop Mart keeps the value chain. An in-house design centre, the Pop Design Center, completes the arrangement by developing house characters and extending series.

That structure explains the catalogue's turnover rate. Where a conventional publisher takes years to create a character, Pop Mart signs several a year and lets the market decide. Of a dozen significant IPs, three or four carry most of the sales at any given moment, and the composition of that leading group changes every couple of years.

Crybaby: Thailand as a second home#

Crybaby is a small figure with streaming eyes, created by the Thai artist Molly Yllom, whose real name is Nisa Srikamdee. The character rests on an unusual proposition in cute collectibles: permission to cry. Each series stages an ordinary sorrow, loneliness, exhaustion, grief, handled without forced consolation.

Its growth has been the fastest in the whole catalogue, with 2024 revenue rising not by percentages but by multiples. The success started in Thailand, which in two years became the group's most dynamic Southeast Asian market, before reaching mainland China and Europe.

The Crybaby case says something about Pop Mart's pivot: the company no longer merely exports Chinese characters, it recruits local artists whose creations then travel back into China. That is the reverse of the flow Asian brands had accustomed us to.

Skullpanda: the IP that ages with its buyers#

Skullpanda, launched in 2020 and created by the Chinese artist Xiong Miao, occupies a distinct position. The figure is darker, more stylised, frankly gothic at times, and each series constitutes a coherent aesthetic world rather than a change of outfits.

It is the IP that allowed Pop Mart to leave the purely childlike register and reach an adult audience that buys fashion. It ages well commercially, with a base of loyal collectors who buy the whole series rather than chase the rare piece, producing revenue that is less spectacular but steadier than a viral phenomenon's.

Hirono: the art-toy bet#

Hirono, launched in 2022 and signed by the Chinese artist known as Lang, is the catalogue's melancholic boy. The character is treated as a work rather than a product: series with continuing narrative, gallery exhibitions, and the very large formats of the MEGA line, whose 400 percent and 1000 percent pieces sell at prices unrelated to those of an ordinary blind box.

It is the group's most explicit attempt to compete on designer-toy territory, historically held by Hong Kong and Japanese studios, with high margins and a small but solvent audience.

The rest of the field#

Molly, signed in 2016 with Hong Kong's Kenny Wong, remains the historic foundation and one of the very top revenue contributors, carried by its collaborations. Dimoo, Pucky, Zsiga, Hacipupu, Twinkle Twinkle and Nyota round out a catalogue whose sheer breadth is itself the argument: multiplying bets is how the group reduces the risk of each one.

What actually made Labubu explode#

It is worth restating, because the lesson drives the whole current strategy. Labubu had existed since 2015 and had sold decently since 2019 without leaving the collector circuit. The global tipping point in 2024 came down to two things.

The first was a change of format. The character was reissued as a vinyl-faced plush sold with a clip, that is no longer a figure standing on a shelf but a bag charm. A collectible then becomes a visible object, worn in public, photographed, compared. The product changes social function.

The second was public demonstration. In spring 2024, Lisa of BLACKPINK appeared with one of these charms, Thailand caught fire, and the object climbed the chain of international celebrity within months. This was not a media plan: it was an accident the company knew how to exploit, ramping up production and multiplying organised queues.

Every IP pushed since obeys the same grid: extend into a wearable object, target a bridgehead market outside China, let social demonstration do the rest.

Getting out of the box#

Diversification is not limited to characters. Pop Mart opened Pop Land, a theme park devoted to its figures, in Beijing in September 2023, launched a jewellery line, developed oversized formats for galleries and started animation projects around its universes. The group also runs its own conventions, which gives it a direct channel to collectors and a testing ground for new releases.

The aim is legible: turn characters with no story, born from an illustration and sold in a box, into narrative properties capable of existing on a screen. That is exactly the road Sanrio travelled with Hello Kitty over fifty years, and Pop Mart is attempting it in ten.

Three risks#

Concentration. As long as one character family carries a third of sales, the group stays exposed to a change in fashion. That is precisely what the next wave is meant to correct.

Regulation. China's market regulator published guidelines in June 2023 governing blind box sales: no sales to under-eights, guardian consent for older minors, mandatory disclosure of probabilities and a recommended cap on unit prices. State media have also intervened repeatedly to warn against speculation on the secondary market.

Counterfeiting and speculation. Resale prices for rare pieces have swung sharply, and copy production has reached industrial scale. A collectors' market whose prices rise too fast always corrects eventually, and the correction damages the brand as much as the resellers.

What the next Pop Mart wave tells us therefore goes beyond the fate of three characters. It is a Chinese company's attempt to build a portfolio of global IP without going through cinema or video games, starting from a seven-euro object sold in a sealed box. Nobody had tried it this way before.

Read alsoPop Mart and Labubu: The Chinese Empire of Global Collectibles

The full history of the group, from Wang Ning to the Labubu figures, and the mechanics of the blind box.

FAQ#

Who created Labubu? Kasing Lung (龍家昇), an illustrator born in Hong Kong and raised in the Netherlands, who devised the The Monsters series in 2015 for picture books inspired by Nordic folklore. Pop Mart has held manufacturing rights since 2019.

Which Pop Mart characters sell best after Labubu? Molly, the historic foundation, then Skullpanda, Crybaby and Hirono, which make up the next wave the group is pushing. Dimoo and a run of more recent creations complete the catalogue.

Is Crybaby a Chinese creation? No. The character is signed by the Thai artist Molly Yllom, and its first market was Thailand. Pop Mart signs artists from across Asia rather than Chinese ones only, which distinguishes its model from that of a national studio.

Are blind boxes regulated in China? Yes, since June 2023. Guidelines published by the market regulator forbid sales to young children, require disclosure of probabilities and recommend a unit price cap. They do not have the status of law but do bind distributors.

How do you spot a counterfeit? Copies are given away by tooth count, flocking quality, slightly off colours and the absence of a verifiable authentication code. Price remains the best indicator: a piece far below market almost always is one.

---

Photo credits: the images in this article come from Wikimedia Commons and are under a free license.