Kasing’s involvement in the forthcoming movie is fitting, as he debuted the Labubu character in his 2017 storybook The Monsters. While an already intriguing design, fans couldn’t help but fall in love with its pastel features once Pop Mart turned them into a collectible toy in 2019. The craze hit new heights five years later, when celebrities like Blackpink’s Lisa, Simone Biles and Kylie Jenner started adding these trinkets to their purses.
“If I fly to New York, I go to Miami, I try to find Pop Mart there,” Lisa told Vanity Fair that year. “Paris, everywhere. Kind of like finding treasure.”
Indeed, celebrities and consumers started to treat the blind box item like a prize, showing off their large collections of standard and limited-edition Labubu’s on social media. And with this meteoric rise, Forbes reported the CEO of Pop Mart Wang Ning’s net worth ballooned to $22.1 billion last year.
