Dubai's Labubu Craze: Decline Claims Clash With Surging Demand, Fakes

An online spat over Labubu has turned Dubai's malls into the stage for two opposing narratives: influencer Jackson Hinkle posted a video declaring "Labubu is OVER" and saying "Dubai is becoming a ghost town," while The Little Things' CEO Hassan Tamimi says the UAE is seeing unprecedented demand for Labubu across Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The disagreement has collectors and shop owners watching resale and footfall for concrete signals of which version will stick.

The Russians With Attitude podcast amplified the decline narrative with a comment about "sterile Labubu cities losing prestige post-Qatar energy strike," tying a geopolitical event to consumer mood. The podcast's phrasing frames prestige as a factor, but the post and episode details for Hinkle and Russians With Attitude were not supplied alongside their statements, leaving their claims as prominent social-media rhetoric rather than verified market shifts.

Tamimi, who runs The Little Things and is described as the UAE's official POP MART retailer, paints a different picture from his Dubai storefronts: "Labubu has become more than a collectible here," he said, noting that fans "pair them with luxury handbags, sports cars, even use them in wedding shoots." Tamimi says Labubu communities in Dubai and Abu Dhabi are trading figures and posting unboxings and display setups online, and he used the word "unprecedented" to describe demand, though he did not provide sales figures in his comments.

Counterfeits are complicating the debate. Tamimi warned that counterfeit toys, dubbed "Lafufu" by collectors, are "circulating online via scam websites and unverified sellers" and that his shops have seen customers arrive with fakes thinking they were authentic. "We’ve had several customers walk into our stores with fake Labubus thinking they were real," Tamimi said. He listed telltale signs buyers should check: typos on packaging, incorrect paint colors, poor stitching on plushies, or even the wrong number of teeth - authentic Labubu figures always have exactly nine.

The clash between Hinkle's "Labubu is OVER" declaration and Tamimi's retail observations exposes a gap in verifiable market data. Neither side supplied hard numbers on store footfall, POP MART sales, or resale pricing trends in Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the statements at hand, so retail activity and sentiment remain decoupled from publicly available statistics. The Little Things' role as an official POP MART retailer is stated in retailer descriptions, while POP MART's own public comment was not part of these remarks.

For now, Dubai's Labubu scene reads as both fashionable and fraught: influencers and podcasts are amplifying decline narratives even as retailers report thriving communities and lifestyle uses, and "Lafufu" counterfeits are adding financial and emotional losses for collectors who paid premium prices believing figures were genuine. The outcome—whether a cooling craze or a booming regional market—will hinge on sales data, mall traffic, and how effectively collectors and sellers can distinguish authentic Labubu from imitation products.