Long lines, pushing, shoving, fights and stores closing. No, these aren’t protests. It’s the mayhem from people rushing to get their hands on a Labubu doll, often fetching triple its original price.
THE ORIGIN Labubus were originally storybook characters in an illustrated book series called “The Monsters Trilogy” written by Kasing Lung in 2015. Not long after, Lung launched an artistic toy series of dolls. But the dolls only became a global craze after he teamed up with Chinese toy company POP MART in 2019.
WHY THE CRAZE? Labubus come in a range of sizes as figurines and plushies, but the most popular come in blind boxes, meaning the future inside is a mystery until opened, which is part of the appeal. Consumers hope to unbox a rare “secret” doll. In the U.S., one Labubu blind box retails for $27.99. But high demand often drives resale prices much higher. On eBay, a rare secret Chestnut Cocoa Labubu can fetch over $149.
A TIMELINE OF DOLL CRAZESThrough the decades, Americans have had an obsession with dolls fads – that “must-have” mentality that drives people of all ages to the extreme to get their hands on the hot merchandise. Here’s a look back at some of the America’s most popular dolls:
TROLLS (1956): Troll dolls were first created by Danish woodcutter Thomas Dam and became one of the biggest U.S. toy fads in the early 1960s. They were briefly popular again in the 1970s and copied by several manufacturers under different names.
BARBIE (1959): The first Barbie doll debuted and sold about 350,000 units her first year. Sales of Barbie exceeded Mattel’s ability to produce her for the first three years of her run.
G.I. JOE (1964): In response to the popularity of Barbie, the first G.I. Joe was released by Hasbro featuring 12-inch, poseable figures representing different branches of the military and the term “action figure” was born.
CABBAGE PATCH KIDS (1982): Cabbage Patch Kids were cloth dolls with plastic heads first produced by Coleco Industries. The doll brand set every toy industry sales record for three years running and was one of the most popular lines of children’s licensed products in the 1980s.
BUILD-A-BEAR (1997): Build-A-Bear was founded in 1997 by Maxine Clark when she started a string of retail stores where customers could assemble their own stuffed animal of their choice, tailored to their own preferences of scents, sounds, looks and outfits. It was known as Build-A-Bear Workshop Inc.
HELLO KITTY (1990s): Hello Kitty was created in 1974 and only marketed toward preteenage girls, but the brand became commercially successful in the 1990s among teenage and adult consumers as well. By 2010, the character was worth $5 billion a year and dubbed a “global marketing phenomenon.”
BEANIE BABIES (1995): Beanie Babies became a hot toy in late 1995. Ty Inc.’s strategy of deliberate scarcity, producing each new design in limited quantity, restricting individual store shipments to limited numbers and regularly retiring designs created a huge secondary market for the toys and increased their popularity and value as a collectible. Some sold for as much as 10 times their value.
FURBY (1998): Furby is an electronic robotic toy by Tiger Electronics and became a “must-have” toy following its holiday season launch. Over 40 million Furbies were sold during three years of its production, with 1.8 million sold its first year and 14 million in 1999.
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BRATZ (2001): Bratz, An American fashion doll created by former Mattel employee Carter Bryant. The four original 10-inch Bratz dolls reached great success with adaptations into a TV series and live-action film and video games. The franchise grossed $2 billion in 2005 and the following year had about 40% of the fashion doll market.
Sources: POP MART; SILive.com.; Statista; NPR; Build-A-Bear; Troll Dolls; reader comment oral history; etsy.com; Business Insider; Mattel; The New York Times, Wikipedia; IMARC Services Private, Ltd.; Grand View Research
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