The Labubu Effect: Tracking Pop Mart's Global Explosion

Designer-toy IPs have started to behave like global brands, and Labubu, the mischievous elf-like character from Pop Mart's "The Monsters" series, is one of the clearest examples in our data. This article walks through where Labubu actually shows up around the world, what catalyzed the spread, why the Pop Mart business model produces an unusual IP shape, and how licensees and brand teams can read the signals against the limits of search-based data.

01What Is Labubu?

Labubu is a character from Pop Mart's "The Monsters" series, designed as a mischievous elf-like figure. In IP Ranking's database, Labubu is one of the most searched character IPs we track. The character is best known through Pop Mart's blind-box product lines, plush variants, and accessories rather than through animated content or feature films.

This matters for IP analysis because Labubu is a character IP that did not grow out of a TV show, manga, or movie. The IP's reach is being built directly through retail product, social media exposure, and community behavior. That is a meaningfully different shape from most globally known character IPs.

02Where Labubu Actually Shows Up

Google Trends data in our dataset shows Labubu scoring 100 in Hong Kong, 88 in Sri Lanka, 70 in Singapore, 49 in Denmark, and 43 in Australia, with continued visible interest in additional markets.

The mix is worth noting. Labubu is strong across Asia-Pacific in particular, but also surfaces in markets such as Denmark and Australia. That kind of geographic spread is not what designer-toy IPs typically look like at this stage of their lifecycle.

Looked at as a whole, this pattern points to a character IP that has crossed from a regional fandom signal into a broader cross-market presence, with Asia-Pacific markets still leading by intensity.

03Why the Geographic Spread Matters

In our dataset, character IPs typically concentrate in either East Asia and Southeast Asia (for Sanrio-style characters) or in Western markets (for legacy Disney and Marvel IPs). Labubu's spread is unusual because it cuts across both.

Markets like Sri Lanka and Denmark showing up at non-trivial scores indicates that the spread is not just an East Asia phenomenon: search interest is genuinely cross-regional, even if concentrated in Asia-Pacific.

For licensees and regional distributors, the read-through is that treating Labubu as a purely "Hong Kong" or "Greater China" IP underestimates the addressable footprint suggested by search demand.

04The Role of Celebrity Endorsement

The Labubu story is inseparable from celebrity exposure. In 2024, BLACKPINK's Lisa was photographed carrying Labubu accessories, an event widely cited as a turning point in the IP's profile across Southeast Asia.

After that exposure, search interest across Southeast Asia rose sharply. In our dataset, K-pop-heavy markets such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Thailand lead Labubu's regional interest signals.

The point here is not that one photograph caused the trajectory. It is that a single high-visibility celebrity touchpoint can convert latent collector interest into broad consumer search demand, especially in markets with overlapping K-pop fandom.

05The Pop Mart Blind-Box Business Model

Celebrity exposure alone does not sustain demand at this scale. The other key factor is Pop Mart's business model.

5.1Scarcity and Collectibility

Pop Mart sells its character IPs largely through blind boxes, packaging where the specific variant inside is not visible at the point of purchase. This creates a structural mechanism for scarcity, collectibility, and repeat purchase intent.

5.2Self-Sustaining Attention Loops

Each new Labubu release generates unboxing content on social platforms. That content gets amplified by recommendation algorithms, which drives more discovery and more search demand, which drives more sales: a self-sustaining attention loop, not a one-time campaign.

5.3Implications for IP Strategy

This is structurally different from traditional licensed character IPs. For Hello Kitty or Disney characters, attention is driven by film, animation, or theme-park content. For Labubu, attention is driven by the product itself, the unboxing experience, and the community around it. The product is the content.

06Why Designer-Toy IPs Are a Distinct Category

Looking at Labubu structurally helps clarify why designer-toy IPs warrant their own category in IP analysis.

Traditional character licensing models assume an underlying narrative property, a show, a film, a comic, and license the characters from that property into merchandise. Designer-toy IPs invert that order: the product is the original IP, and there is often no underlying narrative anchor.

That has implications for valuation, for licensing strategy, and for risk. There is no broadcast catalog to amortize over, no studio release schedule to plan against, and no canonical character bible to defend. What there is instead is a product calendar, a community, and a search-and-social momentum curve.

07How Labubu Compares to Other Pop Mart IPs

Skullpanda, another Pop Mart character IP in our database, reaches 50 countries in Google Trends, nearly matching Labubu's 61, but with a different geographic profile that skews more toward Western markets. Dimoo and Hirono, both newer Pop Mart IPs, show limited global reach in our data so far.

This is useful context for two reasons. First, it suggests that Pop Mart as a portfolio is producing more than one globally legible character IP, not just Labubu. Second, it suggests that geographic mix varies meaningfully across the portfolio, which matters for region-specific licensing decisions.

Treating "the Pop Mart catalog" as a single homogeneous block underestimates the heterogeneity inside the portfolio.

08What This Means for Licensees and Brand Teams

For licensees considering character IP partnerships, Labubu's profile suggests a few practical reads.

First, regional fit matters more than headline popularity. Labubu's strongest signals are in Asia-Pacific, but cross-regional interest exists. A licensing campaign tuned to Asia-Pacific markets and selectively extended elsewhere is a different play from a single global rollout.

Second, the underlying value driver is the product cadence, not a broadcast or release schedule. Brand partners working with Pop Mart-style IPs are essentially partnering with a product calendar and a community, not with a media franchise.

Third, the community and scarcity dynamics are part of the asset, not a side effect. Anything that breaks the perceived scarcity or community ownership of an IP can hurt the IP rather than help it. That is a meaningful design constraint for brand collaborations.

09The Limits of Reading IP Through Search Data Alone

Even with strong Google Trends signals, search data is a single lens. A few caveats worth holding alongside the data:

Search interest reflects intent and curiosity, not sales. Resale prices, secondary-market activity, and licensee deal flow are not visible in Google Trends.

Search interest can also be elastic. Celebrity moments and viral content can lift it sharply, and the same dynamics can soften it later. Reading a sustained high baseline of interest is more informative than reading a single peak.

This is why IP Ranking layers Google Trends with ranking signals, regional coverage, and longer-horizon demand data rather than relying on any single source.

10Recent Trends in Designer-Toy IPs

Designer-toy IPs as a category have been broadening through 2024 and 2025. Pop Mart is the most visible operator, but the underlying pattern (product-led character IPs that grow through scarcity, community, and social momentum) is showing up across multiple brands and regions.

For IP intelligence work, this means the historical assumption that "character IP" implies "media-property-derived IP" no longer holds reliably. New character IPs increasingly originate from product launches, designer collaborations, or platform-native creator communities, not from animation studios or publishing houses.

That structural shift is what IP Ranking is set up to capture.

11IP Ranking View

For an IP intelligence outlet, Labubu is one of the clearest current examples of a character IP that became globally legible without a traditional media anchor. The point is not that Labubu is popular: the point is that a product-led character IP can produce sustained, cross-regional demand signals that read structurally differently from anime, gaming, or character IPs built on broadcast or franchise content.

For brands, retailers, licensees, and agencies, the practical read is that designer-toy IPs warrant their own category lens. Their value drivers (product cadence, scarcity mechanics, community ownership, social momentum) are not the same as the value drivers for media-property-derived IPs, and activations designed for one category often misread the other.

IP Ranking tracks Labubu and related designer-toy IPs as a distinct case category, separate from anime title IPs and from traditional character licensing IPs, because the underlying demand signal pattern is different enough to require a different reading lens.

12Frequently Asked Questions

13Conclusion

Labubu is more than a viral collectible. In our data, it is one of the clearest current examples of a character IP that grew without a traditional media anchor, powered instead by product cadence, celebrity exposure, and community-driven attention loops.

The geographic spread visible in Google Trends, strong in Asia-Pacific with meaningful presence in markets such as Denmark and Australia, is unusual for a designer-toy IP and suggests Labubu has crossed from a regional fandom signal into something closer to a cross-regional character brand.

For investors and IP strategists, the open question is which way Labubu's trajectory bends: toward a lasting IP brand or toward the shorter half-life of collectible crazes. IP Ranking continues to track this through recurring search-interest snapshots across the markets in our database.