Labubu Character Expands Beyond Toys, Serving as China’s Cultural Soft Power

Pop Mart’s Labubu has moved from boutique collectible to a transnational cultural signal, with international sales now contributing nearly 40% of the company’s revenue, according to AsiaSociety. The character has produced visible demand on the street level, queues outside Pop Mart stores in London and Bangkok, and high‑profile celebrity moments, including Rihanna and Blackpink’s Lisa, that amplified global reach.

The commercial engine behind that reach has been deliberate. Retail‑Merchandiser reports Pop Mart relied on artist collaborations, blind‑box mechanics and scarcity to engage digitally native Gen Z buyers, and deployed partnerships with overseas retailers and pop‑ups in cities such as Tokyo and London to turn online buzz into retail footfall. Blind‑box scarcity and design collaborations are credited across outlets with converting niche art figure interest into mainstream pop culture currency.

At the center is creator Kasing Lung, whose provenance is disputed across sources. Retail‑Merchandiser calls him a “Belgian‑born Hong Kong artist,” while Blog Iias Asia says he was born in Hong Kong and moved to the Netherlands as a child; TOYSTV documents a Kasing Lung exhibition in 2017 and Iias Asia notes his 2015 picture‑book series The Monsters drew on Nordic folklore elves and East Asian ugly‑cute aesthetics. Those cross‑border influences help explain Labubu’s hybrid look: oversized ears, protruding teeth and a mischievous grin that mixes Nordic and busu‑kawa elements.

The look itself drives conversation. ForeignPolicy described Labubu as a “bug‑eyed monster” with “enormous vacant eyes, the protruding teeth, the vaguely unsettling proportions,” while Retail‑Merchandiser highlights the “large eyes and quirky expressions” that appeal to Gen Z irony. Online fandom condensed into a single Zhihu user line quoted by AsiaSociety: “so hot it’s burst beyond the sky,” a shorthand for the character’s viral energy in Chinese social spaces.

Social media and celebrity networks supplied the ignition. Ncotemunoz pins the global explosion to an April 2024 Instagram post by Blackpink’s Lisa showing a Labubu keychain, arguing that the moment demonstrates “how cultural influence now travels through celebrity networks and algorithmic amplification rather than traditional state channels.” AsiaSociety emphasizes that entrepreneurial creativity and market forces, not state programs, have reshaped Pop Mart’s image abroad, noting that “the conventional narrative conflates state‑led diplomacy with all of China’s cultural exports and ignores the entrepreneurial creativity reshaping the country’s image abroad.”

Skepticism about longevity runs alongside praise. ForeignPolicy warns that “the graveyard of viral trends is vast” and that “most cultural fads burn bright and brief,” while also acknowledging that a character could become enduring, as Hello Kitty has. ForeignPolicy also referenced a Paris Fashion Week sighting, a guest accessorizing with a Labubu Mokoko Sweetheart toy in a photograph credited to Edward Berthelot/Getty Images on June 27, and mentioned a Tim Cook endorsement in commentary on the franchise’s future.

Analysts see Labubu as part of a wider emergence of market‑driven Chinese cultural IP. AsiaSociety groups Labubu with projects such as Ne Zha 2 and Black Myth: Wukong as examples of bottom‑up resonance, and Iias Asia cites Ming Gao’s line that “It's a glimpse of how China's long‑awaited soft power is beginning to take shape in unexpected ways.” Yet AsiaSociety cautions that “momentum remains fragile and uneven,” leaving the character’s role in China’s soft‑power story contingent on whether Pop Mart and creators can convert viral moments into lasting cultural presence.