Much like death and taxes, Labubus are impossible to avoid—lurking on bags, briefcases, and dog leashes, leering at you with their snaggle-toothed grins when you least expect them. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, these popular plushies have pushed shares of the Chinese toymaker Pop Mart 169.87% higher in 2025 alone.
Labubus also propelled Pop Mart’s revenue 200% higher in the first half of 2025, the company reported late yesterday, and profits soared 350%. Numbers like that should make shareholders pleased, but they don’t seem dazzled at all: The stock sank 4.89% today.
This sudden drop suggests that investors are worried that the Labubu fad may finally be fading.
The Labubu hullabaloo
Labubus were introduced as part of the “Monsters” book franchise back in 2015. The toys really only took off in 2019 thanks to a collaboration with Beijing-based variety shop Pop Mart, which started trading publicly in Hong Kong a year later with a valuation of $6.9 billion—on par with big-league toymakers Mattel and Hasbro.
Today, the toy comes in over 300 styles priced from $15 for a three-inch figurine to $170,000 for a four-foot statue. A large part of the obsession is fueled by the “blind box” packaging, where you never know what you’re going to get: Rare, “secret” versions spur buying frenzies with 1-in-72 odds that, in a randomized Monte Carlo simulation, cost an average of $2,000 to land.
Although Pop Mart now boasts over 500 stores worldwide and 90 retail locations in the US (including vending machines), $1.1 billion of the $1.8 billion in revenue the company reported in fiscal 2024 comes from mainland China. There, the craze is still crazy: Revenue from China soared 112% year over year in 2024.
La-boo-boo
But while the doll’s popularity in its core market hasn’t waned just yet, Pop Mart’s shareholders are focused on the future.
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“At AI-tech-level price equity ratios, some Pop Mart investors are popping out of the stock and taking profits while they can before the fad turns south as so many fads do,” Running Point Capital CIO Michael Ashley Schulman told Brew Markets. “Yes, management guided to a 350% profit pop for the first half of ’25, but after a 170% year-to-date rocket ride, the stock was already priced like a rare Labubu chase figure—about 6 times sales versus Mattel’s 1.5, and a nosebleed $47 billion market cap.”
Labubu sales accounted for about 23.5% of Pop Mart’s overall revenue in 2024, and while the first half of 2025 was clearly a strong one for the company, any hint of weakness in sales of its most popular product could spell disaster for the stock.
“Investors opened the blind box and found…valuation risk. Collectible frenzies can turn into landfill faster than you can say Beanie Babies,” Sculman continued.
Labubu, it was nice knowing you.—JD