Dopamine in a Blind Box

Labubus are the new accessory of quiet chaos—plush proof that status now comes soft, collectible, and slightly unhinged.

If you are in your twenties, how’s your trinket obsession going? Available via Instagram. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.

For a while, Sonny Angels were my hyperfixation. I was simply obsessed with those cherubs that wear all sorts of headgear and were impossible to find. I tracked the stores in London that sold them and even made a map. I followed all of them on social media and whenever they had a restock I ran to buy another one. I have about thirty Sonny’s and the way they are spread around the house drives my girlfriend crazy. 

One day, when hunting for my beloved baby angels, I entered a Pop Mart store and saw those fluffy, smuggly-eyed plush toys with sharp, sharky-looking teeth. I made my sister promise me she would never let me buy one. They are hideous, I said. They look like tiny devils, please don’t ever let me buy these. She agreed. 

However, time went by and I started seeing them everywhere. The cool girls on the tube had one, Dua Lipa has one, a thousand people on TikTok posted videos unboxing them, the trendy bags on Pinterest have one jane-birkinifying them and even Rihanna and Madonna own a fucking Labubu, yes, that’s their name. I was sold; I needed one, too. 

But wait. If you do not already know what a Labubu is, let me explain: the mischievous looking plush toy was created by the Hong Kong artist Kasing Lung in 2015. They are a character from “The Monsters” picture book and are sold in blind boxes by the Chinese company Pop Mart. Oh, may I add that it’s a she? Unless it has a tail, then it’s a boy and it’s called Zimomo. 

I know that because Lisa from Blackpink explained in her video for Vanity Fair about her secret obsession with Pop Mart. During Christmas, her mom posted a picture of their tree and it was filled with the crazy-looking plushies as ornaments. Moreover, the walls were packed with shelves with other miniatures from the retailer. Rumor has it she is the main suspect on how and why this whole pandemic spread so fast. 

The devilish looking toy took the angel’s spotlight: now, while you can easily buy Sonny Angels, Labubus are impossible to find. The company hosts daily lives on TikTok where they hit the sold out mark in seconds and the same happens every time the website restocks. The in-store experience got out of hand as well: huge lines with people showing up at dawn and standing for over eight hours to guarantee their toys. Things got so intense that fist fights happened too. 

The lipstick effect is a perfect illustration of this cultural moment. This theory claims that when the economy is bad, less expensive objects start being considered luxury items. Think of when designer stores had major lines, which some still do, but now we have huge lines over a £17.50 trinket. I am not exaggerating, the hype is so big that a lot of falsies can be found, they’re nicknamed Lafufu’s and Tik Tok users love to point out when someone owns a fake one. Does this behavior sound familiar to you? Beyond falsification there’s also the crazy resell. A lot of stores and online users get their hands on the originals, whether it’s a Sonny Angel or The Monsters, and sell them for absurd amounts like, believe it or not, £440.

All this chaos called for government intervention: in China, bank policies had to change a little after Ping An Bank offered a Labubu for new customers who deposit at least 50,000 yuan (about £5,131) for three months. In the United Kingdom, The Monsters’ series were banned from physical stores for safety reasons (no more fist fights). 

For Vanity Fair, the K-pop star revealed that she always buys the whole set, containing six blind boxes from the series, to avoid the frustration of not getting the one she wants. Available via Instagram. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.

But why is everybody so obsessed with them? The spell behind blind boxes is that it feels like gambling: you never know what you’re going to get. Among the options displayed in the box there’s a secret one, which is super rare. The probabilities of which one you're most likely to get are usually written on the box and there are multiple series for you to choose. There’s Macarron Labubu or Have a Seat Labubu or Big Into Energy Labubu, for example.

Blind boxes are such a huge deal that many other brands have been doing their own versions as well. The market value for those collectibles in China reached over £993.3 million. I get that you feel like you’re making an investment by buying a new one or getting a secret, but trust me, you’re not. They will probably go out of fashion over the next months and end up for less than five pounds on Vinted or Depop. 

There are a lot of factors that make it so addictive and one of them is the scarcity marketing behind them. Those companies create the general feeling that finding one is almost a magical happening. This creates a sense of urgency and even more desire. It’s basically a strategy to feed our fear of missing out (aka FOMO). Or you thought the limited stocks were a lack of product? 

2025 extravagance is not travelling on first class or buying expensive jewelry because that feels as another planet kind of distance. 2025 high living is buying a matcha on your daily basis, getting your nails done at the salon, platinum blond hair (so expensive to maintain) or even having a Rhode phone case. Here is the catch: Labubus are often sold in keychain format. So, you wear one in your bag. Then, everyone sees you wearing it and bam: status symbol. My guess is that the Labubu fever is a major recession sign.

So, here’s my confession: my name is Isabella von Haydin, I’m 26 years old and I own over thirty Sonny Angels, two Labubus and I have another type of figure arriving this week. Yes, I might have a problem. The craziest to me is that from the moment I bought my Labubus after thousands of searches online and some trips to Pop Mart and, yes I admit, some time spent watching their lives, I started to think that I actually didn’t need them (surprising, hun?) but after my ‘unboxing experience’ all I wanted was another one. 

The point is, after you finally get your hands on that blind box you wanted, you may get the toy you wished for or not. Either way, you enter a new stage: that boredom after craving. This happens because that release of dopamine does not last as long as we would like to. As a result we want it again. And again and again.

This concept is not even new: in 1890, in the book “Studies of Pessimism”, the philosopher Schopenhauer alleged that life is a constant oscillation between pain and boredom. The pain is caused by our unfulfilled desires and the boredom is the consequence of getting what you wanted. We trap ourselves in a consumption hamster wheel in the constant search for satisfaction. I guess we’re all like Mick Jagger in a sense.  

With prices getting higher and politics getting crazier, what can we do besides comfort ourselves? Let’s face it: times are hard and getting a job that pays the bills feels like an impossible task. Gen Z is known as a pessimist generation when it comes to financial success, so we decide to spoil ourselves with random stuff. The feeling is something like ‘I might never be able to buy a house but hey, look at my trainers collection’ or ‘the world is ending anyway, so let’s just live and book that trip/buy that/do this/etc.

Collectible toys can be seen as a huge recession sign. Lisa’s house filled with trinkets, for example, is seen as the ultimate dream for a lot of young people since goals like owning a house or buying a car feel so distant from us. This is the new opulence. 

Late capitalism’s greatest trick was convincing us salvation comes in spending our ‘adult money’ in plastic figures. But maybe it’s not really about the toy at all. Maybe it’s about the little jolt of control we get in a world where everything feels out of reach. Or maybe it’s just a plush devil with tiny teeth that makes us feel seen while splashing our hearts with nostalgia. Either way, I need to stop falling for it.