How Chinese Toy Company Pop Mart Is Taking Over the World

For years, products stamped with a “Made in China” label have been associated with kitschiness, mass production, and poor quality, in part because global demand for cheap generic products turned China into a factory for the world. 

But for Claire Carrillo, one Chinese branded product is worth travelling distances, waiting hours in lines, and breaking open her wallet for. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

“It’s something that makes me happy, like it’s a treat to myself,” the 24-year-old digital marketing consultant from the Philippines tells TIME of Pop Mart’s CryBaby toy—a plush genderless creature with puffy red cheeks, furrowed brows, and welled-up tears around its eyes.

Since discovering Chinese toy company Pop Mart a year ago, Carrillo has bought nearly 100 of its products, many of which she gives as gifts to friends and family. Her love for the brand has sent her on a hunt for its characters, including travelling to Singapore for just 24 hours in hopes of finding a limited edition or waiting four hours in the rain in Taiwan just to come away with one collectible.

And Carrillo isn’t alone. A search of “Pop Mart” on TikTok renders hundreds of thousands of hauls and unboxing videos. Fans have flocked overseas to look for sold out or exclusive products at different Pop Mart stores, roboshops (vending machines), or pop-ups; and groups on Facebook and WeChat trade updates on when the brand comes out with new lines or restocks its products.

That virality has translated into a recent boom for the company, which was founded by 38-year-old entrepreneur and now-billionaire Wang Ning in 2010: last year its shares shot up by almost 370%, ahead of most members on the MSCI China Index. In mainland China alone, Pop Mart has over 46 million members, consumers who sign up to collect points for purchases, as of December 2024, and even opened Pop Land, an amusement park spanning 40,000 square meters in Beijing, in September 2023.

But it’s outside China where Pop Mart is really taking off. Over 130 of the company’s more than 530 stores worldwide as well as over 190 of more than 2,490 roboshops, as of December 2024, are located outside mainland China, and its non-mainland revenue grew by 375% to 5 billion yuan (about $700 million) in 2024, accounting for nearly 40% of its approximately $1.8 billion total revenue, according to the company’s 2024 annual report, which was released on Wednesday.

Some might say Pop Mart is riding a wave. One could argue, however, that it is making the wave. While the rest of China’s economy slowed and youth unemployment spiked last year, its guzi—goods, specifically character-based merchandise and collectible toys—market continued to soar, with Pop Mart leading the way. China’s designer toy industry is projected to reach more than 110 billion yuan, or US$15 billion, in retail sales in 2026—more than 1500% increase from 2015, when retail sales were just US$890 million. Worldwide, the toy and figurine market is projected to reach a market value of $49 billion by 2034, up from $26 billion last year.

“I go Pop Mart everywhere,” Lisa, the mega famous Thai actress-singer and member of K-pop group Blackpink, told Vanity Fair in a “my secret obsession” video in November. “If I fly to New York, I go to Miami, I try to find Pop Mart there, Paris, you know, everywhere. Kind of like a treasure, finding treasure.”

Here’s what to know about how Pop Mart took over the world.

Redefining luxury for a new generation of consumer

Where Pop Mart distinguishes itself from both domestic and international competitors is in reading the mood of its consumers, Ashley Dudarenok, who runs a China and Hong Kong-based consumer research consultancy, tells TIME. Whether it’s rebelliousness, a desire to escape, or exhaustion from work or school, Pop Mart customers are buying more than just a toy, they’re buying a symbol of themselves.

They’re often essentially useless, says scholar Erica Kanesaka, an assistant professor of English at Emory University specializing in the politics of cuteness in Asian American literature, but they “add a sense of vibrancy and imagination to our mundane activities and environments.”

Relatability seems to be a big part of cultivating fandoms for different characters. Carillo says she is drawn to the CryBaby series because she thinks of herself as a cry baby. Ashley Jane Leow, a 25-year-old filmmaker in Singapore collects figurines of Hirono, an angsty-looking boy with tousled hair, and Nyota, an introverted girl with wide eyes and short bangs, because they remind her of herself and her boyfriend. “It got so bad that I was dreaming about it at one point,” Leow tells TIME.

Pop Mart’s strengths fit into a broader client-centric marketing model several Chinese brands have begun to adopt that incorporates client psychology and storytelling. “What truly matters is how a brand makes clients feel,” luxury brand strategy expert Daniel Langer wrote in Jing Daily last August.

Creating a following for a brand typically used to rely on products being a status symbol, such as designer handbags. But the proliferation of cheaper “dupes” made easily available on Amazon, TikTok Shop, and Shein have taken some of the allure away from such products.

Increasingly, Langer observed, many of the rising Chinese luxury brands that are now excelling globally have moved away from a traditional 4P model (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) to a 4E model (Experience, Exclusivity, Engagement, and Emotion). While Pop Mart doesn’t market itself as a luxury brand, it resembles one for a new generation of consumers, and its prices range from US$5 for a small accessory to more than US$1,500 for a 30-inch figurine, while it’s even made a foray into jewellery.

Capitalizing on artist individuality—and IP

To stand out in an international market, Pop Mart is pushing art and innovation to the forefront of its public image, Eva Zhao, the head of international marketing at Pop Mart, tells TIME. By platforming its individual designers and artists hailing from around the world, the company creates a sense of individuality in its products, a far cry from the stereotypes of mass production and copycat products often applied to Chinese brands. That also means it can partner with legacy brands that would otherwise be competitors, like Disney and Sanrio, for toys of their characters in Pop Mart’s unique style and with artists in different countries whose art might have wider appeal to customers overseas, Zhao said.

Labubu, a Nordic monkey-like forest elf with a devilish grin designed by Netherlands-based artist Kasing Lung, went viral outside of China last year for being “ugly-cute”—but it isn’t Pop Mart’s most popular character in mainland China (that’s Molly, a little girl with cat-like emerald eyes and a distinct pout designed by Hong Kong-based artist Kenny Wong). Instead, Labubu is Pop Mart’s bestselling IP globally—in part fueled by Lisa, who posted an Instagram story to her more than 100 million followers last April hugging a giant Labubu plush toy and with a Labubu bag charm. In 2024, The Monsters IP (which includes Labubu) generated 3 billion yuan (US$419 million) in revenue—a year-on-year growth of 726.6% in related revenue, according to the annual report.

Pop Mart shares the biographies of its artists on its website or social media and posts background stories and additional content for characters to try to foster deeper connection with consumers. For example, Los-Angeles based artist Libby Frame who designed Pop Mart’s Peach Riot, a punky fictional three-member girl band, also creates songs for the band.

The emphasis on the artists behind each character resonates with Leow. On a visit to the Pop Mart store in Taipei, Leow was struck by the fact that an entire floor had been turned into an exhibition of the art behind one of Pop Mart’s figurines, Pucky—a stubby, chubby sprite named after Puck from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “I was like, you know what?,” recounts Leow, “Support an artist, I see the vision, so I bought it.”

Breaking into the global ‘cute’ market

While Pop Mart sells large busts, figurines, and accessories, their toys most commonly come in a “blind box” format. Pop Mart’s blind boxes are themed by character and series, but similar to Gashapon machines in Japan (which churn out a surprise toy inside a capsule), exactly which toy you’ll get is a mystery when you buy it.

Japan has long dominated the global “cute” market, going as far back as the late nineteenth century when Japan was a major exporter of children’s toys, says Kanesaka. That was cemented by the “explosion” of kawaii (Japanese for “cute”) culture in the second half of the twentieth century—reinforced by the “Cool Japan” campaign, a deliberate effort by the Japanese government to promote Japanese popular culture overseas. Hello Kitty, Pikachu, Kirby, and many other kawaii characters are “now firmly embedded in the global culture,” says Kanesaka, the Emory professor.

Dreams Inc., a Japanese company, makes blind box Sonny Angels and Smiskis, which are also incredibly popular worldwide, with sales last year three to four times higher than in 2022. But Kanesaka doesn’t find it unusual that a Chinese company can also now break into that market. Online shopping and social media have “opened up the flow of information about [Chinese] goods and about the racialized logics that attach China to counterfeits and second-rate products that are merely derivative,” she says.

Dudarenok, the consumer research consultant, sees Pop Mart’s global success as more than just an ebbing of stigma against Chinese manufacturing; instead it’s a direct result of the company’s ability to navigate and succeed in the Chinese market. “It’s not a surprise that this kind of company comes out of China,” says Dudarenok. That’s because “China is the world’s most competitive digital market, with maybe the most spoiled consumer in the world that wants things fast, cheap, and good.” Pop Mart understands those consumer needs, according to Dudarenok, and the Chinese domestic market lets companies “fail fast and succeed fast” to figure out what consumers really want.

One way Pop Mart distinguishes itself from Japanese competitors is through its stores. By contrast, Dreams Inc. largely sells its toys online or through distributors like Kiddy Land, Kinokuniya, and Urban Outfitters. Pop Mart, on the other hand, turns its own stores into an experience—with each modeled after one of its characters—fuelling customers like Carillo and Leow to plan travels around visiting different Pop Mart stores. They’ve also capitalized on the blind box craze through their roboshops vending machines that make buying their blind boxes all the more accessible.

For some, the model has actually generated interest in visiting China—just to visit the various Pop Mart stores and attractions there. After visiting Pop Mart stores in London, Tokyo, Singapore, and Melbourne, Samantha Todd, a 30-year-old content creator from North Brisbane, Australia, now has her sights set on the global flagship store in Shanghai, which spans more than 500 square meters with two floors and 10 rooms designed to look like a futuristic spaceship. It’s a trip she never thought of making before discovering Pop Mart.

How blind boxes foster community—and virality

Todd is one person who has found social media fame through unboxing her blind box toys. Todd discovered Pop Mart last year after posting a TikTok about how she didn’t get the allure of Sonny Angels. Her followers suggested she look at Pop Mart instead, and she “just fell in love.” Todd has since amassed dozens of Pop Mart toys—many of whom accompany her on her overseas travels in a large brown knapsack—and nearly 250,000 followers who watch her unbox her toys and visit stores in search of limited editions.

One video posted in January this year chronicles her weeklong quest to get a specific Labubu from a Pop Mart vending machine, even skipping her gym classes to be first in line. It raked in more than two million views and 200,000 likes. “Choosing labubu over gym is totally something I would do too,” one commenter wrote. “Don’t know what a labubu is Or a pop mart Or the strength it requires to go to the gym more than once a year. But I’m invested,” another wrote. Other commenters said they couldn’t wait to see her unbox the toys, or they wished there was a Pop Mart near them, while others still said the video had inspired them to begin their own “Labubu journey.”

The blind box format lends itself to unboxing videos in large part because creators and viewers share in the feeling of rooting for a certain item and reacting to what they find—unlike other social media shopping haul videos, the creator doesn’t know what they’re getting, making the unboxing a kind of game or gamble as much as it is showing viewers the product, and potentially spurring viewers to buy their own and take a chance on getting the character they want. And the elements of surprise and collecting inherent to blind box toys “provide a small way to introduce magic into the ordinary and to find community through sharing, trading, and displaying them with other people,” particularly at a time when many might feel disconnected or alienated by hyper-digitalization, says Kanesaka.

That’s exactly what draws 26-year-old Amanda Lee, who works in digital marketing in Singapore, to Pop Mart. When Pop Mart started trending in Singapore last year, where the company has 10 stores, Lee and her colleagues decided to open CryBaby Powerpuff Girls blind boxes together in the middle of the workday. Since then, they’ve made it a frequent lunchtime habit, typically all buying blind boxes from the same character line and occasionally bringing back blind boxes from one of their trips overseas to open together.

“It’s just a fun little thing that we get to do together during our lunch breaks to relieve some stress,” she tells TIME. On her desk sits a CryBaby called “Starboy,” which has a turquoise ombré head capped with a matching party hat, a translucent blue body with mini baubles inside and a star on its chest, and glittery tears welling up in its eyes.

Because of the element of mystery, the blind boxes have a similar allure to gambling, so much so that China regulates sales of blind boxes to children. But there’s no risk, like gambling, says Dudarenok. You’re guaranteed to get something cute for a relatively affordable price, she tells TIME: “It’s happiness in a box.”