How Hong Kong Gave Rise to Labubu
The next sentence May weep a globalist for joy: a toy that is produced by a Chinese company, in Belgium, inspired by a Thai k-POP dying, has changed to the greatest geng in the largest gene-culture trend of 2025.
This abomination of a sentence is the tale of Labubu, the creepy coverage monster that swept this summer this summer. You must have seen the trend the trend, but most people are still unaware of the global, decade-long story that has it. Last week I published a function story About my trip to Labubu's heart, how this culturally mania was made up, and where it can go here.
It is an inherent international story, but it's not the first time we've seen it. Think about how the world fell Going Pokemon as a kpop bands like BTS and Blackpink. These are all examples of regional cultural industry successfully successfully find global audience for their work. However what is new about Labubu, is how it is the first time that a Chinese company could be this level of success and cultural influence.
Sure, there are always accident to work for a success of this scale, but the more I have been successful, the more I have been the historic and economic reasons, and the toy behind it, pop mart, ended in this place. In various ways it seems at other Chinese tech businesses that went from false producers, move the value of the value as they produce manufacturing experience in valuable technological.
Labubu's story begins in Hong Kong in the 1970s and beginning '80, when the city became a manufacturing of production. From mattel and disney to Japan of Japan, almost every major playing company, for the manufacturing in Hong Kong, because of the low labor costs.
Howard Lee, the founder of a Hong Kong Toy Studio Named How2work, told me how that period of history shaped his childhood. “Many parents would go to factory and get home with outsourced-sig work like hand-painting toys home,” he says. It was also easy for people to buy toy with cosmetic or functional imperfections of children grew up with relative easy babies and other toys they have made for the better they cannot afford.
