Crybaby could be Pop Mart’s next Labubu-style breakout hit

Labubu still drives Pop Mart’s machine, but the hunt is already widening. In Pop Mart’s first-half 2025 results, Labubu accounted for nearly 35% of revenue and profit soared nearly 400% year on year, a reminder of how much the company now depends on one character even as collectors start eyeing Crybaby as the next place to rotate.

That shift makes sense inside the blind-box economy Pop Mart built. Collectors are not just buying for display anymore; they are tracking supply, rarity, and the kind of social buzz that can send a character from store shelves to resale platforms overnight. Crybaby fits that pattern because it offers the same chase logic, even if its look is softer and more emotional than Labubu’s mischievous monster face. For buyers who want a fresh drop without leaving Pop Mart’s ecosystem, that difference matters.

Crybaby is not a new invention. It is a Pop Mart IP created in 2017 by Thai artist Nisa Srikumdee, also known as Molly, and inspired by the death of her golden retriever. That backstory gives the character a different emotional register from Labubu, and it helps explain why some collectors see it as more than a substitute. It is easier to imagine a fan rotating into Crybaby for the art direction, then staying for the scarcity, than treating it as a temporary stand-in.

Pop Mart has been acting like a company that knows one breakout is not enough. In its 2024 annual results, revenue reached 13.04 billion yuan and net profit hit 3.4 billion yuan, and the company has since pushed beyond monster figures into new categories. It opened a jewellery concept store in June 2025 and later showed it was studying Disney-style IP monetization, a sign that management wants a repeatable franchise model rather than a single viral toy that burns hot and fades.

The regional picture points in the same direction. Pop Mart’s Bangkok store opening drew more than 10 million yuan in sales on opening day, underscoring how quickly localized fan communities can turn a character into a retail event. Crybaby has already found especially strong enthusiasm in Thailand and Southeast Asia, which gives it a real base beyond the speculative chatter around Labubu resale prices.

That resale piece is the deciding factor for many collectors. As Labubu prices have eased, the drop has looked more like a supply story than a collapse in demand, which means the market is not abandoning the hunt so much as moving it around. If Crybaby keeps attracting queues, variants, and online conversation, it will not need to replace Labubu outright. It only needs to become the next character collectors reach for when one shelf starts to feel crowded.