A couple months ago, my 9-year-old daughter started talking about something called a Labubu. I had literally no clue what that even meant, but my husband did. He had seen a viral video featuring two grown men comparing little stuffed dolls, one calling out the other’s for being a fake. He evidently didn’t think much of it until our daughter started talking about it. Then, one day, we were walking along a populated boardwalk on the Jersey Shore, and he exclaimed, “oh, there’s one of those dolls!”
Throughout the day, we spotted several more people with the Labubu dolls hanging from their clothes and bags. I was still baffled by why adults were walking around with stuffies hanging from their bodies, so he found the video and showed me. I laughed and promptly forgot all about it.
It wasn’t until we were in New York City a few weeks later that I thought about the dolls again. My daughter steered me into a store selling trendy products from different countries in Asia, and I instantly knew why. She was on the lookout for a Labubu, but we didn’t find one. Across the street however, we stumbled upon an outdoor market, and there were a few different vendors with racks of the little monster dolls on offer. We let her pick one out and shelled over $20. Then we got home and found out it was a fake … a “Lafufu.”
In our ignorance, we failed to realized just how rare a real Labubu is out in the wild.
My daughter was happy, but she mentioned wondering if her new toy was real. Confused, I asked her what she was talking about and found out that legit Labubu dolls are super difficult to get your hands on and that lots of people actually have dupes dubbed “Lafufu.” She said it didn’t really matter, and we moved on. But by the time we got home, a piece of her new Labubu had popped off. I was pretty sure the real thing wouldn’t fall a part in a matter of hours, so I did a little bit of research and found out that actual Labubu dolls are only sold at a store called Pop Mart.
Pop Mart has a limited number of brick-and-mortar locations in the US.
But, they also do live sales on TikTok Shop, which is how a lot of people acquire authentic Labubu dolls. By the time we realized this, my husband had sipped the Kool-Aid. He was determined to track down a real one, and while he’s not really TikTok savvy, he did find out that we actually live within an hour of three Pop Mart locations. He started making phone calls and discovered they were all completely sold out — they evidently sell out in seconds online and in-store. But they did tell him how to go about getting one.
So what exactly is a Labubu and how did they reach such a viral level of popularity?
Labubu dolls are little plush monsters inspired by a picture book by artist Kasin Lung. Pop Mart, a company based in Hong Kong, first dropped a limited number of these fluffy toy creatures in 2019, and dubbed them “The Monsters.” They’ve been steadily gaining popularity ever since. It seems though, that the craze has reached its peak in the United States in 2025. According to Google Trends, online searches for the term “Labubu” have skyrocketed since January 2025.
Pop Mart now drops limited collections of these adorable — and slightly creepy — stuffed dolls in blind boxes on a weekly basis, and each drop features a “rare” Labubu, but you won’t know if yours is the coveted rare Labubu until you open up the box, further increasing the viral nature of the whole Labubu trend. Each collection features dolls in a variety of colors wearing different outfits and accessories, and even varying facial features.
Now, there are tons of people on TikTok and Instagram doing unboxing videos to reveal their Labubu blind box hauls and even content creators going viral with comedy videos about the Labubu trend, doing makeup and fashion videos inspired by Labubu dolls, and so on. So of course, that means, interest just keeps growing.
Still, it’s not impossible to get a Labubu and real ones aren’t even all that expensive.
@popmart_us 💫Bring the energy! 🌟April 25 🍭THE MONSTERS Big into Energy Series-Vinyl Plush Pendant Blind Box #popmart #popmartus #labubu #whoislabubu #labubuv3 #bigintoenergy #labububigintoenergy ♬ original sound – POP MART US
Well, that is, if you can nab one directly from Pop Mart. The Labubu dolls are released on the Pop Mart website every Thursday at 9 p.m. and in-store every Friday at 10 a.m. You can to do the whole stalk and refresh thing, kind of like you used to do on Ebay. Generally, an authentic Labubu doll from Pop Mart will cost between $25 and $100, depending on the individual doll. If you live near a Pop Mart store, you may be able to reserve one online and pick it up in store.
Alternately, real Labubu dolls are available from some resellers, but as we mentioned, there are a lot of fakes out there, so if you want the real thing, you have to be diligent about purchasing from a trusted source. Pop Mart actually has an official process for verifying the authenticity of your Labubu.
Where else can you buy a Labubu?
In larger cities and tourist areas, you may be able to find claw machines stocked with Labubu dolls. Some businesses and even individuals take the time to score a large number of them with the intention of reselling them at a much high costs, which is how they stock the machines. This summer, we’e spotted claw machines stocked with Labubu dolls in the New York/New Jersey area.
Online resale companies like StockX and Kicks Crew also offer Labubu dolls. If you happen to have a high-end sneaker reseller local to you, you may have some luck finding an authentic Labubu there. My husband actually ended up randomly discovering this one day when he spotted them at our local mall. Having already grown impatient with the Pop Mart website, he wandered in, grilled the shopkeeper, and decided to go for it, even though he paid three times the retail price. Our little girl got her much-coveted Labubu from the Exciting Macaron collection, as a last-day-of-school present, after getting straight A’s all year.
How to know if your Labubu is real.
Unless you’re in a brick-and-mortar Pop Mart store or on the actual Pop Mart website linked above, there’s a chance you’ll end up with a Lafufu. If you’re OK with that, go for it. If not, here are some things to look out for:
• Price. If there are too many for too cheap at the same place, they’re probably fake.
• Teeth. If they don’t have nine teeth, they are fake.
• Box branding. If they are not in Pop Mart branded boxes, they’re probably fake.
• QR code. Even if they are in Pop Mart boxes, if they don’t have a QR code on the back that goes to the official Pop Mart verification site, they’re fake.
• Box finish. If the boxes are bright and glossy, they’re probably fake.
• Verification code. If you make it to the verification website and the code on your box doesn’t match, it’s definitely a fake.
• Coloring. And this is a hard one, but if the coloring of the plastic face is even slightly off, it’s a fake.
