What is a Labubu? And where can you buy one in Metro Vancouver?
There’s a new toy craze sweeping social media. It’s called Labubu.
A character pulled from the pages of a picture book series called The Monsters by artist
Kasing Lung, the Pop Mart toys are causing a sensation online — and in stores.
First released in 2015, the plush toys catapulted into viral territory after fans spotted K-pop superstar Lisa of Blackpink with one of the characters dangling from her bag.
In a recent interview with Variety magazine,
the Thai singer-actor noted the popularity of the toys has made them even difficult for her to get a hold of.
“I can’t stop talking about Labubus. I’ve been going crazy for them for almost a year, but now I can’t really get new Labubus. They’re really hard to find. I’m kind of sad,” she said.
Trending toys are nothing new. The global toy sales reached $108.7 billion in 2023,
according to the Toy Association
. And many of those sales are prompted by toy fans eager to collect specific characters and figurines.
But, every once in a while, a toy transcends the kid-adult collector line. Similar to the Ty Beanie Babies craze in the late ’90s, Labubus are proving popular with a wide variety of toy fans.
in a single day thanks to app downloads due to the “company’s surging popularity in the U.S.”
And it’s making them hard to get a hold of.
During the recent launch of the new Big Into Energy collection, the Canadian Pop Mart website appeared to get bogged down with the traffic as fans flooded the site to purchase the products. Disappointed Labubu fans took to the company’s social media account to share their frustration at being unable to purchase one of the new figurines.
While the Chinese company has a Canadian website, it does not currently operate Pop Mart stores in the country.
A spokesperson for Pop Mart Canada shared in an email to Postmedia that Pop Mart is planning to open 1-2 stores in Canada later in 2025. The company noted it is “not quite ready” to release more information about the store locations or other opening plans at this time.
One place where Canadians can get their hands on an authentic Labubu is through the store
. The trending toys can also be found at select resellers such as
in Richmond and
in Calgary.
Founded in Edmonton in 1994 by Amin Jivraj, Showcase was originally created as an outpost for “unique gadgets and gizmos in the mall where customers could try it before they buy it,” according to CEO Samir Kulkarni. The company has grown to include 150 stores across Canada and the U.S.
These days, they’re all about viral online trends spanning toys and fan merchandise to novelty foods like Dubai chocolate, specifically targeting the Gen Z consumer.
“We are a data business at our core. We happen to manifest as a retailer, but we are a technology and data company, and so we are tracking data, billions of data points on any given day to try to understand the demand in the marketplace so that we can catch the next big thing,” Kulkarni explains. “So, over the last 30 years, we’ve been the first retailer to launch everything from memory foam bedding 20 years ago, before memory foam bedding was a thing, to remote control helicopters, to weighted blankets, to the latest toy sensation or beauty sensation.”
Using artificial intelligence to comb social media platforms for up-and-coming trends, Kulkarni says they’re now able to “catch trends” faster than ever.
That approach is what allowed Showcase to jump on the Labubu trend early through its ongoing toy partnership with Pop Mart.
“We are the main retailer of Pop Mart products, which include Labubu in Canada,” he says.
The Labubu toys at Showcase are priced higher than on the Pop Mart website (
in stock for $129.99 on Showcase for
the new Big Into Energy Labubu versus sold out and
$37.99 on the Pop Mart website
).
The price increase, according to Kulkarni, is due to the demand and shipping costs. “We’re doing everything we can to try to keep costs reasonable. But it is a difficult environment.”
The Showcase executive says new launches appear on their site about two weeks after they launch — and invariably sell out in minutes — on the Pop Mart site.
“
But the easiest way that we would recommend to our customers is to go to the local store and see what’s available there, because the store receives new stock almost every day,” Kulkarni says.
is another hub for Labubu resale. A search of the term yields dozens of resale posts ranging in price from $20 for a “Lafufu” — the name bestowed on the fake versions of the trending toy — to $300 for a full set of six Labubu Big Into Energy toys.
As the hype around Labubus continues to grow — Kulkarni refers to the toys as a “global sensation” — the demand for the products seems to show no sign of slowing down.
“It rivals the biggest trends in toys over the past 30 years that we’ve seen,” he says. “Whether it’s Cabbage Patch Kids or Webkinz or Beanie Babies or Shopkins back in the day, or even Disney Frozen was a giant trend for us.
“It’s definitely up there with the big ones, for sure.”
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Source: vancouversun.com