Blind Boxes: The TikTok-Driven Retail Hack Behind Labubu Success

Pop Mart, maker of Labubu blind boxes, generated more than $5 billion in 2025. Revenue soared 185% year-over-year.

Yet amid heavy reliance on Labubus, the Chinese firm actually narrowly missed analyst expectations at its latest accounts. Shares fell more than a fifth.

The collectibles giant is faced with the challenge of successfully branching out from its flagship product, while also maximizing the longevity of the Labubu trend. To that end, there is even a movie in the works.

Yet whatever the future holds for Pop Mart and Labubus, they have shone a light on a powerful retail blueprint for both physical and E-commerce retailers. The blind box phenomenon has proved to be a massively successful sales technique.  

“Blind box” searches have increased by 1600% in the last 5 years, and the Exploding Topics algorithm forecasts further growth. 

Read on to find out how retail is drawing from the world of gaming to create a new kind of product that is hugely resonating with consumers. I’ll take a look at some of the biggest players in the emerging blind box space, and explore how TikTok and other social media is fueling the trend.

What Are Blind Boxes?

A blind box or mystery box is a sealed package containing a surprise item. The buyer typically knows the general category of product, but the specifics are only revealed when they open the box.

These boxes can be “blind” to a greater or lesser extent. Collectibles brand NECA offers boxes in the broad-brush categories of “pop culture”, “sci-fi”, and “horror”, labels that provide only minimal clues about the potential contents.

“NECA” searches have increased by 13% in the last 2 years.

For example, in an unboxing video for one of NECA’s pop culture blind boxes, the contents include everything from a Golden Girls figurine to an Earl Sinclair toy from the 1990s TV show Dinosaurs.

The most popular example of the blind box phenomenon, the Labubu, is not really that blind at all by comparison.

After all, consumers know that they will get a Pop Mart Labubu doll. The only mystery is which figurine is inside the box.

But collectibles like these are highly suited to blind boxes.

Despite being nominally similar, Labubus vary significantly in both desirability and value: consumers are attracted to the possibility of finding a rare item, with the guaranteed safety net of at least securing one of the figurines.

The most sought-after Labubus have sold for in excess of $10,000 on the resale market. One giant Labubu sold for $170,000 at a specialist auction event in Beijing.

The Labubu explosion

Labubu blind boxes have proved massively lucrative for their Chinese seller, Pop Mart.

The retailer has actually had a permanent presence in the US since September 2023, when it launched a store at the American Dream Mall in New Jersey.

But the recent success of its Labubus has enabled significant further expansion. It added 109 stores in 2025, many of which were in the US.

There are now more than 60 Pop Mart stores in the Americas (compared to roughly 400 in China). And more than 20 US mall and outlet openings are planned for 2026.

As of the end-of-year accounts filed in March 2026, rest-of-world revenue for Pop Mart now almost matches revenue from the internal Chinese market. Here are the figures, converted into US dollars:

	China	Rest of World
Retail store sales	$1.46 billion	$1.04 billion
Online sales	$1.23 billion	$1.14 billion
"Roboshop" (vending machine) sales	$190 million	$50 million
Wholesales/others	$130 million	$120 million
Total	$3.01 billion	$2.35 billion

The recent success of the toys in Europe has led to Pop Mart opening numerous UK stores as well. A new store in Manchester was opened in August last year, attracting queues of up to 5 hours, and its biggest UK location opened in Liverpool in December.

And underscoring the wild viral successs of the Labubu IP, a movie is in production in collaboration with Sony Pictures.

The “Loot Box” of Retail

Gamers are the ones who should be least surprised by this recent blind box phenomenon. In fact, they have been waiting for retail to catch up.

The retail industry has been circling around the idea of blind boxes for a long time. The Exploding Topics Pro newsletter was highlighting subscription boxes way back in February 2021.

Typical subscription boxes share some similarities with blind boxes. Consumers sign up to boxes with a specific category (e.g. world candy), and the month-to-month content then comes as a surprise.

But the concept is only now coming to maturity in the form of blind boxes. And they are effectively real-world “loot boxes”.

Searches for “loot boxes” have increased by 4300% in the last 15 years. Search spikes have aligned with various controversies and law-making initiatives.

Loot boxes are an increasingly ubiquitous part of video games. Paid for with either in-game or real-world currency, they generally contain items or skins that can be applied to characters.

They have been a prominent part of the gaming landscape since 2008 at the latest. That’s when EA first introduced its FIFA Ultimate Team game mode, built around pack-opening dynamics.

But it’s believed that the first example traces all the way back to MapleStory in 2004.

Like blind boxes, the contents of a loot box are unknown when the player makes the purchase. As a result, loot boxes have attracted controversy and even bans in some countries (e.g. Belgium), given that they can be viewed as a form of unregulated gambling.

But throughout most of the world, they are a major part of the gaming experience. More than 70% of Steam games today earn revenue through loot box purchases.

Psychologically speaking, loot boxes are associated with dopamine spikes. The cliffhanger effect and near-miss impact drive further purchases.

The psychologically-rooted impulse to keep buying can also be observed with real-world blind boxes.

27-year-old Californian Dana Nguyen told The Guardian she had spent more than $4,000 on Labubus between January and August 2025. She described the sensation when opening the boxes as “straight gambling”.

Pop Mart itself previously commissioned a study that found that 70% of pop toy consumers would purchase 3 or more blind boxes to try and get the toy they want.

Such is the attraction of repeat purchases, China has banned blind box sales to children under 8 years old, while requiring parental consent for older children to make purchases.

As the concept soars in global popularity, lawmakers worldwide will have to grapple with if and how they want to protect children from the appeal of blind boxes. Because there is no question that they keep buyers coming back for more, in much the same way as loot boxes in video games.

The TikTok Unboxing Effect

As well as being engineered to appeal to the brain chemistry of customers, blind boxes are also increasingly popular among creators, especially on TikTok.

That’s because blind boxes are perfectly suited to unboxing videos.

“Unboxing video” searches have increased by 158% in the last 5 years.

This is a hugely popular video format regardless of the product in question. According to Semrush Keyword Analytics for YouTube, there are 291,000 monthly YouTube searches for “unboxing”.

“Unboxing” is also one of the most popular TikTok searches. There are 17.3 million posts under the unboxing hashtag.

And unboxing videos truly come into their own in the case of Labubus and blind boxes in general. Unlike with most other products, creators genuinely do not know what they are getting and can react organically in a way that will engage their audience.

Viewers get a slice of the dopamine hit they would get from buying a blind box just by watching the outcome of the unboxing (triggered by “mirror neurons” in the brain, which fire regardless of whether an act is being performed or observed). It keeps them engaged, which in turn benefits the creators.

“Labubu unboxing” specifically attracts more than 10,000 YouTube searches per month (a figure that was as high as 100,000 at one point). And the top Labubu unboxing videos on TikTok have reached more than 5 million views.

Completing the virtuous cycle for retail, engaged viewers may also be influenced to go out and buy the boxes (or their specific contents) for themselves. 56% of US consumers have gone on to purchase products they first saw advertised on TikTok.

You can use an analytics tool like TikTok Insights to find platform-specific trends as they head toward virality. 

For example, if you were using Labubus as your start point, you could get a map of related TikTok hashtags:

This contains a lot of insights. "The Monsters" is the range that contains the Labubu character (it makes up more than 38% of Pop Mart's annual revenue), but we can also observe posts under "skullpanda" and "crybaby" hashtags.

As it turns out, these are the two next highest-selling Pop Mart toys, accounting for 9.5% and 7.9% of annual revenue respectively. If you were to then search for skullpanda in the Trend Analysis tool, you would be shown a host of related trends, highlighting the editions with the most viral momentum.

Returning to the hashtag cloud, you can also see that non-branded terms like "bag charm" and "keychain" feature quite prominently in TikTok posts. You can click into the relevant circles to explore those trends more closely.

In the case of bag charms, you can see that the number of posts and views are trending upward over the past 6 months. And you can even view top-performing recent TikToks directly from within the tool.

This is invaluable data for informing your potential blind box strategy as a retailer or creator on TikTok.

Blind Boxes Will Outlast Labubus

The Labubu phenomenon certainly isn’t over. Continued soaring sales figures shows that interest remains high.

However, while Pop Mart will undoubtedly hope to build on this huge momentum in new ways, including its new global retail locations and its upcoming movie release, Labubu blind boxes have the hallmarks of a craze.

Investors certainly seem to think so. Despite the full-year results showing such significant revenue growth, shares fell 22% in afternoon trading in Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, the resale market is stalling (although PopMart says that's a good thing). And searches have dipped dramatically from a mid-2025 peak:

“Labubu blind box” searches are already way down from an August peak, and the Exploding Topics algorithm expects volume to taper off entirely.

But blind boxes in general are here to stay.

A whole host of other brands are trending upward on the back of blind box offerings.

SMISKI is another blind box figurine brand.

“SMISKI” searches have increased by 5,800% in the last 5 years, and 119% in the last 2 years.

Its range of collectible glow-in-the-dark figures saw a steep rise in searches throughout 2024. Interest has declined slightly from a peak, but nowhere near as steeply as Labubus.

The same Japanese parent company, Toru Soeya, also makes figurines known as Sonny Angels. Again, these are sold in blind boxes.

There are more than 170,000 TikTok posts under the Sonny Angel hashtag. Last year, overwhelming demand sparked a worldwide shortage, which spawned a gray market with markups of up to 3,000%.

As for Pop Mart itself, it will hope to show investors that it has IP beyond just Labubus that can appeal to consumers in the blind box format. We've touched on Skullpanda and Crybaby, but Hirono blind boxes are also showing promising growth.

“Hirono Blind Box” searches have risen by 293% in the last 2 years.

Blind boxes for more than just toys

It’s not all about collectible figurines, even if these toys lend themselves especially well to the blind box mechanism. All kinds of brands could consider using blind boxes as a marketing technique.

More “traditional” brands like cookware company Le Creuset are turning to blind boxes to clear out excess stock. The “Factory to Table” box promises $300+ worth of product for just $50, although it is currently only sold at special in-person events.

Beauty brands are also getting in on the act. P Louise, which once sold $2 million worth of product in a single 12-hour TikTok live stream event, has started to offer blind make-up boxes to US consumers.

Meanwhile, some retailers are putting together blind boxes of products from multiple different brands. UK retailer HMV markets mystery boxes of random pop culture items that may include wall art, drinkware, and other assorted accessories themed around the film, TV, and gaming sectors.

There are also specialist liquidator brands that buy up excess stock from major companies and sell them to consumers as blind boxes.

“Liquidation store” searches have risen by 207% in the last 5 years.

Liquidation.store sells mystery boxes in various general categories. There are boxes dedicated to haircare, arts and crafts, pets, beauty, household, and more.

Incorporate Blind Boxes Into Your Black Friday and Long-Term Strategies

The success of Pop Mart and Labubus is really a story about the rapid rise of blind boxes.

As a brand or retailer, it’s well worth exploring how you can incorporate blind boxes into your marketing. The popularity of loot boxes in gaming provides the blueprint for a new, compelling form of consumerism.

The dedicated Exploding Topics product database is invaluable for finding items that will really capture consumer attention. For instance, a quick look at current high-growth products suggests a PDRN blind box would work well for beauty retailers.

Sign up to Exploding Topics today to get more insights into emerging e-commerce trends.