Labubu buyers in the Philippines turn to Pop Mart and resellers

**Manila is where the Labubu hunt turns into a timing game.** The first stop is still the official Pop Mart store, but even there, shelves can empty fast enough to make a collector’s plan feel more like a sprint than a shopping trip. In Makati and near SM Mall of Asia, the story is the same: go in expecting scarcity, not certainty, and move quickly when stock appears.

Start with the official channel, then move fast

If you want the cleanest shot at authentic stock, Pop Mart Philippines is still the best place to begin. The company says it now has more than 500 stores in 30-plus countries and regions, plus more than 2,300 ROBOSHOPs and e-commerce channels, which makes the Philippines part of a much larger retail machine rather than a one-off local drop. Its local storefront also keeps LABUBU and other THE MONSTERS items in the catalog, with some pieces marked available, some hot, and others upcoming, a mix that explains why the shelf can look very different from one visit to the next.

That matters in Manila because the buying window can be tiny. In the guide’s on-the-ground account, two Pop Mart branches had already sold out, which is exactly the kind of reality collectors need to factor in before making the trip. If you are going to chase one, go early, check the official catalog first, and assume that a restock can disappear the same day it lands.

What was still on shelves in Makati

The clearest shopping scene comes from the Makati stop. The plush Labubu dolls were gone, but the store was not empty, and that detail is useful because it shows how the line can fragment in local retail. Other items were still sitting on shelves, including a Let’s Checkmate pendant, The Monsters classic sparkly plush pendant, The Monsters scented candle, a Labubu laptop bag, and Mokoko figurines.

That mix tells you something important about Manila stock patterns. Plush may vanish first, while accessories and side characters linger longer, so the buyer who walks in looking only for the most obvious format can leave empty-handed even when the store still has real inventory. For collectors who care about completing a set or just getting something official in hand, the accessory shelf may be the last reliable foothold.

Blind boxes are part of the chase

Part of the appeal, especially for families and newer collectors, is that you never know exactly what you will pull. The children in the story were hoping for specific versions, including a blue one, but the blind-box format means the surprise is built into the purchase. That uncertainty is not a bug in the Labubu world. It is the engine that keeps people returning to the shelf.

POP MART’s own story helps explain why the format works so well. The company says Kasing Lung created LABUBU in 2015 as part of The Monsters fairy world, inspired by Nordic mythology, after beginning collaboration with How2work in 2011. The character started as part of a designer-art ecosystem and then moved into three-dimensional toy form, which is why Labubu can feel like both an art object and a mass-market collectible at once.

Why sellers outside the mall matter

Once the official shelf is bare, the market shifts to resellers. The guide says it eventually found a real Labubu from a Philippine reseller, which reflects a reality many collectors already know: availability, authenticity, and convenience rarely arrive together. Resellers can solve the stock problem faster than a mall run, but they also force buyers to weigh trust, price, and the risk of paying for a figure that does not come with the same clean retail certainty.

eBay sits in the same secondary-market lane, but with a different trade-off. The guide treats it as a useful backup for buyers who want a wider selection or more shipping flexibility. For people outside the Philippines, that also makes the local story feel global: Labubu is distributed unevenly enough that official stores can sell out even in major retail areas, and the next best option is often a resale marketplace rather than another mall.

Scarcity is part of a much bigger demand wave

Manila’s empty shelves are not happening in isolation. Reuters-reported coverage in 2025 said Labubu demand helped push Pop Mart’s net profit up nearly 400%, and that CEO Wang Ning said Labubu sales would surpass 10 million units per day from September 2025. Later reporting said the company increased production tenfold to try to keep up. Reuters-linked coverage also said first-half 2025 revenue rose 204% to 13.88 billion yuan, net income jumped 397%, and Labubu accounted for about 35% of revenue in that period.

That scale explains why a Manila shopper can walk into a major retail center and still find nothing. The shortage is not just a local stock hiccup. It is the retail face of a global demand shock, and the Philippines is feeling it the same way collectors in other markets are.

ABC’s reporting adds another layer: Pop Mart began releasing Labubu as blind-box collectibles in 2019, which helped push the character from art-toy curiosity into mass popularity. Celebrity sightings then helped turn it into a status object as much as a collectible, and that visibility feeds the urgency every time a fresh box lands in a store.

What to do before you make the trip

The practical move in Manila is simple: treat the official store as the first and best stop, then be ready to shift to a reseller only if the shelf is already gone. Check the local Pop Mart catalog before leaving, because the difference between hot, upcoming, and actually available can change the whole outing. If plush stock is your target, move even faster, because the Makati stop showed that plush can disappear while smaller items still remain.

For collectors, the real lesson is not that Labubu is impossible to find in the Philippines. It is that finding one depends on speed, channel, and timing more than luck alone. In Manila, the sold-out shelf is not the end of the hunt. It is the signal to decide whether you are still chasing the official drop, or already in reseller territory.