Labubu is everywhere. On keychains in Tokyo, on bags in Seoul, on TikTok unboxing videos with millions of views. The little monster with the sharp teeth and the round body became the face of designer toys for an entire generation. Pop Mart built a empire around it. And now that empire has a problem.
In April 2026, Pop Mart’s stock dropped 30%. Revenue was up 184.7%. Profit nearly quadrupled. The numbers were absurd. And investors still ran. Why? Because Labubu accounts for roughly 40% of Pop Mart’s total revenue, and everyone knows what happens when one character carries that much weight. Business Insider called it plainly: Labubu propelled Pop Mart to the top, and it might be its undoing.
This isn’t just a stock market story. It’s a collecting story. And if you’ve ever bought a blind box, traded a figure, or rearranged widgets on your home screen until they looked right, it affects you too.
What the Post-Labubu Crisis Actually Means
The headlines say “crisis” because that’s what headlines do. The reality is more boring and more interesting at the same time.
Pop Mart has dozens of IPs. Molly, Dimoo, Skullpanda, Crybaby, Hirono, Hacipupu. These aren’t obscure. Collectors know them. Some of them have dedicated fanbases that would follow the character anywhere. But none of them move revenue the way Labubu does. When 40% of your income comes from one monster with pointy ears, you don’t have a portfolio. You have a bet.
The Japan Times reported in March that Pop Mart is actively pushing new characters to diversify. Crybaby, the crying figure that somehow makes sadness cute, is gaining traction. Skullpanda’s gothic aesthetic has a loyal following. Hacipupu is weird enough to work. But transitioning from a Labubu-centered business to something more balanced takes time, and the market doesn’t wait.
A YouTube video titled “POP MART is experiencing the Post-Labubu Crisis” posted on April 17 already has hundreds of thousands of views. The conversation is happening whether Pop Mart wants it to or not.
This Problem Is Older Than Pop Mart
Single-IP dependency isn’t new. It’s the same pattern that hits every collecting category eventually.
Beanie Babies built an empire on specific plush designs. When interest shifted, the whole thing collapsed. Funko Pop pinned its early growth on a handful of licenses. Pokemon survived because the IP itself was a universe, not a single character. Even in fashion, Supreme had to evolve past box logos to stay relevant.
The pattern is always the same. One character or design catches fire. It pulls in casual buyers who don’t know the brand, just the thing. Revenue spikes. The company leans into the momentum. More of the thing, more shelf space, more collaborations. Labubu’s FIFA World Cup 2026 partnership — that’s the play. Make the character so ubiquitous it becomes unavoidable.
But ubiquidity and collecting are opposites. You collect things that feel special. When a character is on every bag, every phone case, every convenience store shelf, the collector’s instinct starts to fade. Not because the design got worse. Because the feeling of “I found this” got replaced by “I saw this everywhere.”
We wrote about why limited drops work and the argument hasn’t changed. Scarcity creates meaning. Ubiquity kills it.
The Glitter Dumpling Is the Other Side of the Coin
Here’s the contrast that makes this moment interesting. While Pop Mart is dealing with Labubu saturation, a $5 blind box called the Glitter Dumpling went viral on TikTok. James Charles unboxed one and got 17.4 million views. Compilation videos hit 16 million. The product is cheap, simple, and completely unrelated to any established IP.
Why did it work? Because it was new. Because nobody had one yet. Because the unboxing was the experience, not the character backstory. The Glitter Dumpling proves that collecting energy doesn’t need a franchise. It needs novelty and surprise.
This is the tension in blind box culture right now. Established IP brings reliability and audience. New IP brings excitement. The companies that figure out how to have both, how to rotate without losing identity, are the ones that survive the transition.
What This Means for Your Screen
If you’re reading this on 24QW’s site, you already know where I’m going. But the connection isn’t forced. It’s structural.
The post-Labubu problem is an IP diversity problem. When one design carries too much weight, the whole system gets fragile. This applies to physical blind boxes and it applies to widgets on your home screen.
A widget collection built around one aesthetic or one character type has the same vulnerability. It gets stale. You stop noticing it. The home screen you spent an hour arranging becomes background noise. Your home screen says something about you, but if it says the same thing every day for three months, the statement loses its edge.
The fix is what good collecting has always been about: rotation. New drops. Different aesthetics. A gothic widget next to a cute one. A seasonal design that replaces last month’s favorite. From Bearbrick to your home screen, the best collections are the ones that evolve.
Pop Mart Knows the Answer. The Question Is Speed.
To its credit, Pop Mart isn’t ignoring the problem. The strategy is clear: push new IPs, build Pop Land theme parks, do fashion collaborations, expand globally. Data-driven character development. The Labubu movie at Sony Pictures will keep the franchise alive. The FIFA World Cup 2026 collab puts Labubu in front of people who’ve never heard of blind boxes.
The global art toy market hit $19.57 billion in 2026, growing at over 5% annually. There’s room for multiple characters to thrive. But the money follows attention, and attention follows the character of the moment. Right now that’s still Labubu. The question is whether Crybaby or Skullpanda can steal enough of that attention to make the portfolio less lopsided.
But the structural issue remains. The collector who bought ten Labubus last year doesn’t automatically buy ten Crybabys this year. Switching costs are real even when the price is low. Attachment isn’t transferable.
Digital collecting doesn’t have this problem in the same way. A widget drop doesn’t require shelf space or manufacturing lead time. A new character can go from concept to home screen in days, not months. The speed of rotation matches the speed of taste.
Blind box apps can diversify faster than physical toy companies because the constraint isn’t plastic. It’s design. That’s not an advantage to dismiss lightly. The post-Labubu problem exists because physical objects take time to produce, ship, and shelve. Digital doesn’t wait.
Collecting Needs Variety. Not as a Feature. As a Principle.
I’ve been collecting things long enough to know the cycle. You find something you love. You go deep. You buy every variant. Then one day you look at your shelf and realize you’ve been buying the same thing in different colors for a year.
That’s the Labubu trap. Labubu just happens to be the character in question. What matters is what happens when any single design gets so dominant that everything else feels like a sideshow.
The collectors who stay engaged longest are the ones who rotate. Who treat their shelf, or their screen, as a living thing. Who get excited about a new drop not because it’s rare, but because it’s different from what they already have.
Pop Mart will probably be fine. The company has the capital and the distribution to push through a transition year. But the lesson is there for anyone building a collecting experience, physical or digital: one character is a hit. Variety is a system. Systems outlast hits.
The post-Labubu conversation is about more than stock prices. It’s about what makes collecting feel alive. 24QW builds that feeling into every drop — diverse characters, rotating aesthetics, a screen that keeps surprising you.