Ancient bronze horse ornament goes viral as Labubu lookalike

A bronze horse ornament more than 2,000 years old ended up with a very modern identity crisis. Viewers saw the artifact and immediately linked it to Labubu, turning a museum piece into a viral shorthand for Pop Mart’s toothy collectible.

The object is a danglu, a decorative piece placed at the center of a horse’s forehead. It is displayed at the Luoyang Museum in Henan Province and belongs to the Luoyang Institute of Archaeology’s collection. Museum staff said the resemblance to Labubu drew fresh attention, and the ornament’s placement in the second-floor exhibition hall only added to the steady stream of posts and jokes around it.

That reaction says as much about Labubu as it does about the bronze piece. Created in 2015 by Kasing Lung as part of THE MONSTERS series, Labubu has become instantly legible by its high, pointed ears and serrated teeth. Pop Mart describes the character as a small monster, and that familiar silhouette has now become a kind of visual shortcut, one strong enough that a Han-era-looking artifact can be re-read through it.

The character’s reach is backed by a retail footprint that is hard to ignore. Pop Mart says it now operates in more than 23 countries and regions through 350-plus offline stores and 2,000-plus Roboshops. In 2024, the company said THE MONSTERS was among four IPs to cross RMB 1 billion in revenue for the first time, alongside MOLLY, SKULLPANDA and CRYBABY. In 2025, Pop Mart reported revenue of RMB 37.12 billion and profit attributable to owners of RMB 12.78 billion.

That scale helps explain why the Labubu comparison lands so fast. A 2,000-year-old danglu no longer reads only as an archaeological object when audiences have a mascot-sized reference point ready to hand. In Luoyang, the past did not simply survive behind glass. It got filtered through a character millions already recognize, and that is what sent the bronze horse ornament racing across the internet.