The Labubu doll craze is becoming so widespread that it’s making a very specific subset of professionals millions of dollars as more and more fans travel with their collections.
You’d have to be living under a rock to have never seen a Labubu doll — a small, gremlin-like creature with a mischievous, shark-toothed smile.
Most often found dangling from handbags or lanyards, Labubu is a character born from the mind of Dutch-born Hong Kong artist Kasing Lung for his 2015 children’s book series ‘The Monsters.’
Nearly a decade later, Labubu has taken over the toy market thanks to Chinese retailer Pop Mart, who snagged the licensing rights to the critter and started selling variants of them in ‘blind boxes.’
In fact, they’re so popular that travelers are taking out insurance on the dolls for their trips abroad, and fakes are flooding the streets — but Pop Mart aren’t the only ones profiting from the craze.
Labubu dolls make big bucks for ‘toy surgeons’
As reported by the South China Morning Post, Chinese ‘toy surgeons’ are also making bank thanks to the Labubu phenomenon, raking in millions of dollars as collectors come to them to help repair their fluffy friends.
Toy surgeons are exactly what they sound like: they re-stuff, repaint, sew, and repair plush toys, stuffed animals and other figures. They’ve grown quite popular over the last few years thanks to social media, gaining millions of views restoring clients’ beloved childhood toys.
Labubus, in particular, are a driving force in their current financial success. Chinese toy surgeon ‘Heartman,’ based in Shanghai, says he’s had to enlist the help of his wife and even expand his base of operations as customers come in droves to spruce up their collections.
In fact, Heartman says he’s repaired over 100 Labubus in the past month, charging a mere ten percent of the original cost of the Labubu (which retail for about $14 USD on average).
But the real profit comes from the second-hand market, where Labubu figures sell for an astronomical markup, even going for thousands of yuan for rare variants (hundreds of USD).
For pros like Heartman, though, it’s all about being “a doctor that mends illness and rescues life,” not the money… but despite Labubu’s popularity, Chinese social media users are a bit confounded at the whole situation.
“I do not understand why people pay large sums of money for them in the first place, then even pay to have them fixed,” one commented, per the SCMP.
Still others speculated that Labubus are so prominent with ‘toy surgeons’ due to their portability, as they’re often attached to bags and keychains: “Maybe the owners need to fix them as it may be much more expensive to buy one of the same version.”
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