The Current - Everyone wants a Labubu! …a what?

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

A little elvish toy in a bunny suit with a mischievous smile, that’s a Labubu for you — and she, yes it’s a girl, is taking the world by storm. What made Labubus so popular, and how are they bringing us together when people are fighting to get their hands on one? We have answers.

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Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. That's the sound of a fight that broke out in a shop line in London recently. And as that bystander said at the end, they're all for the booboo's. For what? The booboo's. What is a la booboo? A la booboo is the latest viral toy. Basically like an elf like doll in a bunny suit fits in the palm of your hand.

And around the world, people are desperate to get their hands on this thing, even getting into scraps like we just heard. These dolls can cost anywhere from $25. Some resell online for more than $4,000. We caught up with a collector in Toronto to hear why these things are blowing up. About a year and a half ago, my mom came back from the Philippines. She was like, do you things are blowing up. Not you being a trendsetter because fast forward, LeBubu's blew the hell up in North America. And my mom's like, I told you I should have gotten new LeBubu's when they were cheap. That's Ramona Amante.

She is a true fan. She actually took her LeBubu to a tattoo shop and got the doll's face inked on her skin. She only has three LeBubu's right now, but says she is always on the hunt for more. If you're going to buy a piece of clothing, let's say, and it's 50 bucks and you wear it for one season and then you end up donating in any ways, the Labooboo is longer than that. It's clearly already been popular.

We have at least a good year here in North America. So I'm paying 56 bucks for a year of my Labooboo girly. And when you do the girl math and you divide it by how many days I'm going to wear it, then we're at like zero cents. Alisha Haridassani Gupta is a reporter with the New York Times, has been following the global Labooboo craze. Alisha, good morning. Hi, Matt.

How are you? Thank you for having me. I've never said this word and now I've said it several times in the course of this conversation. What is a Labooboo? never said this word and now I've said it several times in the course of this conversation. What is a Labooboo? Well, actually, I have to praise the previous clips, Girl Math, because I love that. I love that logic there. A Labooboo is a Nordic elf.

It's got a mischievous smile. They're characters that were first envisioned for a children's book in 2015 by an artist who was born in Hong Kong. And now they have been turned into collectible items. Do you have any? I do not, sadly. I actually went down to a couple of stores here in New York and I really wanted to get my hands on one, but I could not. Do you feel like you've been left out of something? I mean, do you have friends or family that have them? This is how I actually heard about it in the first place because a friend of mine was actively

pursuing a Labooboo and she was documenting her journey on Instagram and I just thought, what is this friend doing? What is she looking for? I don't understand. And once I started looking into it, I kind of gathered the picture a little bit because I grew up in Hong Kong and I have seen so many of these collectible items, the craze for these items come and go. It's Hello Kitty, Pokemon, Gudetama. I was like, okay, this is the next thing. I said in the introduction, they cost $25 and up, right? There are add-ons beyond the resale market.

There are add-ons that would increase the cost. Oh, yeah. beyond the resale market, there are add-ons that would increase the cost. Oh yeah, there is an entire community and an entire micro economy around creating little outfits and little handbags for these Labooboo dolls creating, I mean I saw online that there have been community hangouts on having a Labou brunch and having Labubu raves. People really gather around this doll and it's created so many communities offline and online. So I think that there is also that element of it. It's sort of becoming a glue that brings people together in some way. How did this become a thing?

So, you know, I think one of the key drivers of its popularity is the way that it's distributed in that most of the dolls are sold in a blind box, which is that customers don't know what they're getting inside the box. So you know you're getting a Labooboo, but you don't know which one you're getting. Yeah, exactly. And there have been, I think, three collections that have dropped online and have been really

popular. And, you know, when you get a blind box, you do the unboxing videos online. It's kind of like getting one of those Kinder eggs. It's sort of exciting to see what comes out. And because you know it's a Labooboo, you want what's in there. It's not like a kinder egg where you kind of get something that's useless and you throw it away. It's just kind of like the mystery of which kind

of Labooboo you're going to get. And I think that mystery has created a little bit of hype around it. And then last year, we started seeing a lot of celebrities collecting LabBubu's. We had Lisa from Blackpink posting about her LaBubu collection. We saw Rihanna with a LaBubu pinned to her Louis Vuitton bag. Suddenly it's become not just a niche collector's item, but a real fashion statement. It's often clipped onto high-end

luxury bags now. And there was a pop-up at Harrods. I don't know what says luxury fashion more than Harrods. So it really has transformed. The perception of it has transformed from just a sort of cute little toy to really a fashion statement. But you said earlier something about how people were talking to you about their journey to get the Labooboo. Usually the journey, if you want something, is you go to the store and you buy it or you sit in front of your laptop and you order it on the phone. Somebody described trying to get their hands on these to you as like the hunger games. What's going on there? Why is it so difficult to get to the Labooboo? Yeah. Okay. So first of all, online, these dolls sell out within seconds. And I was online when the previous drop happened and I was

reporting, so I was just watching it happen. The website crashed, and I reached out to PopMart and said, what is going on there? And they said, we're just getting too much traffic that we anticipated. There are rumors that maybe the traffic is driven by bots who are buying it to then resell it. But yes, it sells out online within seconds. Do you wanna explain just quickly before you continue,

what's PopMart for people who don't know? Oh, right, yes. PopMart is the company that exclusively sells Labooboos. And the company is founded in China and the stock is traded in Hong Kong. It's a huge company that makes other characters, but the Labooboo doll has been one of their most successful characters and collectible items.

And so you go onto Pop Mart's website, it crashes within seconds. And I think it was just a couple of weeks ago that the CEO of Popmart, I think it was Fortune Magazine that said he's become maybe like $1 billion richer because of the number of people downloading the Popmart app in the US to try and get their hands on a little boo-boo. Because they say the app experience is slightly easier than the desktop or the website, the Pop Mart website. Okay, so there's that. The online experience is really, really tough. And so you go to the store and you find hundreds of people lining up. And the person I spoke to, she was there at 445 and there was already

a huge queue snaking around the store and people were there for the long haul because they had snacks, they had chairs, they had drinks, they were there to hang out for a long time. And then they also released them in limited numbers in the stores. So I think in the LA store, which is where I was reporting, there were only a couple hundred and there were definitely more people than that. So again, it becomes really, really difficult to get your hands on one and then you turn to the resellers and they jack up the prices. And then fights break out in the line when people are trying to get their hands on them. Yeah, exactly. I haven't really, I mean, I don't know what was happening in London,

but here I haven't seen that level of fight. But in London, PopMart had to pause selling the Labooboos in order to avoid more fights. Are the Labooboos caught up in the trade war and the tariffs that everybody's talking about? We've been talking about this a lot. And I mean, you mentioned they're coming from China. Is that part of the story? You know what? I think they're kind of recession proof and that's kind of the reporting that Bloomberg has hit on as well.

The stock has been doing extremely well. Profits are rallying. Despite all of the global uncertainty and trade war concerns, Q4 of last year, the company reported $1.8 billion in revenue, which was a 100% increase from the previous year. And the Labubu dolls in particular contributed about $400 million in revenue. It makes it one of their top selling products. That's real money. That's a lot of money.

Imagine the CEO is a millennial 30-something-year-old. He's really hit a jackpot here. Analysts are bullish that the next quarter earnings of PopMart, which is supposed to come out soon, will also be positive. The expectation is that the La Boubou craze will continue to boost its revenues. It seems like it's not affected at all by the global war. They're kind of like, what global trade war? What are you talking about?

Just in the last couple of minutes that we have, let me ask you, I mean, what is it, this is not the first time that people have gone crazy, as you said, over extensively a kid's toy, whether it's Pokemon, whether it's Beanie Babies, go back in time to the Cabbage Patch dolls. What do you think it says about us that every few years people get caught up in something like this? You know, what I found in my reporting, okay, first of all, the Labooboo specifically is both cute and ugly

Which is something that someone else mentioned as well. I think that that's a little bit of a differentiating factor I think all of the other characters like Hello Kitty sunny angels all of this they were they were just cute So there's there's a little bit of an edge to this one and I think what I found in my reporting is that it's a reflection of how fraught our times are right now. Everyone I spoke to said that the LaBouBou has become a very easy, politics-free way to start a conversation with someone else. It was described to me as an escapism hobby. It's a way to just sort of not delve into politics. I mean, you and I were both talking about global trade war concerns for the company, but I don't think the regular collector is talking about that. They're just sort of like,

this is cute. If I see someone else with a Labooboo doll, I'm gonna go up to them and say, hi, where did you get yours? I love the color and I love the little outfit you put on it. And, you know, you're on your way. It's a really great conversation starter. And I think there are very few things right now that serve as a conversation starter without being political or heavy or daunting, you know? Lububus are bringing us together. Aside from the fighting in the line, they're bringing us together. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Alicia, thank you very much. I mean, somebody's got to be figuring out what the next Lububu

is and I wish them the very best of luck because soon they'll be really rich too. Alicia, thank you for this. Thank you so much. Take care. This has been The Current Podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.ca slash The Current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.