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

Pop Mart, maker of Labubu blind boxes, saw its revenue fall 45% to 50% in the third quarter of 2026 compared with the third quarter of 2025, according to its latest unaudited business update.

It's a sharp reversal. Amid heavy reliance on Labubus, the Chinese firm's revenue soared 185% year-over-year to more than $5 billion in 2025, according to its annual results.

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 1,725% 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/fantasy", and "horror", labels that provide only minimal clues about the potential contents.

“NECA” searches have increased by 15% in the last 2 years.

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.

Image of the Cat Mode On Labubu taken from Pop Mart

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.

One giant Labubu sold for $170,000 at a specialist auction event in Beijing in June 2025.

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 success of its Labubus has enabled significant further expansion. Pop Mart operated 676 stores worldwide as of June 30, 2026, up from 630 at the end of 2025.

There are now 86 Pop Mart stores in the Americas (up from 64 at the end of 2025), compared with 455 in China, according to the company's interim results for the first half of 2026.

Pop Mart's revenue reached RMB 17.17 billion in the first half of 2026, up 23.8% from the first half of 2025. That was below the second half of 2025, when Pop Mart's revenue was RMB 23.24 billion, based on the company's full-year and first-half figures.

Growth outside China has also gone into reverse. Pop Mart's revenue from outside China fell 11.1% in the first half of 2026 compared with the first half of 2025, while revenue in China rose 47.3%. Here are the figures by region:

Region	H1 2025	H1 2026	Change
China	RMB 8.28 billion	RMB 12.20 billion	+47.3%
Asia Pacific	RMB 2.85 billion	RMB 2.58 billion	-9.7%
Americas	RMB 2.26 billion	RMB 1.89 billion	-16.5%
Europe and other regions	RMB 0.48 billion	RMB 0.51 billion	+5.9%
Total	RMB 13.88 billion	RMB 17.17 billion	+23.8%

The recent success of the toys in Europe has led to Pop Mart opening numerous UK stores as well. A new flagship store opened on 23rd October on Oxford Street in London.

And underscoring the wild viral success of the Labubu IP, a movie is in development in collaboration with Sony Pictures, with Paddington director Paul King attached to direct.

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.

Sign up to Exploding Topics Pro now to get these emails weekly, as well as access to our full database of trending products, startups, and search terms. We've been super-early to huge trends like air fryers, snail mucin, pickleball, and hundreds more.

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 1,700% 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 2009 at the latest. That's when EA added its Ultimate Team mode, built around pack-opening dynamics, to FIFA 09.

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. Researchers have studied the link between loot box spending and problem gambling, according to a 2023 study in Addictive Behaviors Reports.

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 $4,000 on Labubus between January and August 2025. She described the sensation when opening the boxes as "straight gambling".

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.

Singapore is also drafting rules for blind box sales, and will consider making sellers disclose the odds of getting each item, according to the country's Ministry of Home Affairs.

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 200% in the last 5 years.

This is a hugely popular video format regardless of the product in question. You can see how many people search for formats like this on YouTube with Semrush Keyword Analytics for YouTube.

"Unboxing" is also a hugely popular hashtag on TikTok, with millions of posts.

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.

The top Labubu unboxing videos on TikTok have reached about 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. That makes TikTok a sales channel as well as a marketing one, as the rise of social commerce shows.

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 made up 38.1% of Pop Mart's revenue in 2025, according to the company's annual results), but we can also observe posts under "skullpanda" and "crybaby" hashtags.

As it turns out, these were the two next highest-selling Pop Mart toys in 2025, 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 (popular as part of back to school 2026 trends), you can see that the number of posts and views was trending upward over the 6 months shown. 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 isn't over, but it is cooling fast. Pop Mart's revenue fell 45% to 50% in the third quarter of 2026 compared with the same quarter of 2025, according to Pop Mart's unaudited business update.

Pop Mart's revenue in the Americas fell 70% to 75% in the third quarter of 2026, and revenue in China fell 25% to 30%, compared with the third quarter of 2025.

The Monsters range made up 26.0% of Pop Mart's revenue in the first half of 2026, down from 34.7% in the first half of 2025, according to the company's interim results.

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

Investors certainly seem to think so. Despite the full-year results showing revenue growth of 185% in 2025, Pop Mart's shares fell more than 22% in Hong Kong in March 2026.

Meanwhile, Labubu resale prices have fallen (although Pop Mart puts that down to higher supply, not weaker demand). And searches have dipped dramatically from a mid-2025 peak:

“Labubu blind box” searches are down 91% from an August 2025 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 7,300% in the last 5 years, but have dipped 3% 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 company, Dreams Inc., also makes figurines known as Sonny Angels. Again, these are sold in blind boxes.

Western toy makers are getting in on the act too. MGA Entertainment launched Hyojo on Amazon in December 2025. It calls the line “Cuddlectibles”: blind box plush toys built around licensed food and drink brands such as Hershey’s, Reese’s and Jolly Rancher.

The first series had 18 styles to collect, with rare and ultra-rare versions of every character, according to MGA.

“Hyojo” searches have increased by 4,900% in the last 5 years.

Later Hyojo series feature Krispy Kreme, Pepsi, Harry Potter and Hello Kitty and Friends designs, according to MGA’s own Hyojo shop.

Sonny Angels have a big following on TikTok. In 2024, overwhelming demand sparked a worldwide shortage.

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. In the first half of 2026, revenue from several other Pop Mart characters grew even as The Monsters slowed.

Twinkle Twinkle became Pop Mart's second-biggest IP in the first half of 2026. Twinkle Twinkle's revenue rose to RMB 2.65 billion, up 580.6% from RMB 389 million in the first half of 2025.

Hirono blind boxes are also showing promising growth. HIRONO's revenue rose 38.5% to RMB 1.01 billion in the first half of 2026 compared with the first half of 2025, and HIRONO stores have opened in the UK and South Korea.

“Hirono Blind Box” searches rose by 417% in the 2 years to May 2026.

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 use surprise boxes too. At Le Creuset's in-person Factory to Table sales, Premier ticket holders who spend at least $300 get a free Surprise Gift: a piece of cookware in a plain box.

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 makeup boxes to US consumers.

Meanwhile, some retailers are putting together blind boxes of products from multiple different brands. There are specialist liquidator brands that buy up excess stock from major companies and sell them to consumers as blind boxes.

UK retailer Liquidation.store sells mystery boxes in various general categories. There are boxes dedicated to beauty, haircare, home fragrance, baby and kids' products, 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, with Black Friday falling on November 27 this year. 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.

How We Compiled These Figures

Pop Mart's revenue, store and IP figures come from the company's annual results for 2025 and interim results for the first half of 2026, filed with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Third-quarter 2026 figures come from Pop Mart's unaudited business update, filed with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on October 27, 2026. Pop Mart figures are as of October 27, 2026. Search growth figures and trend charts come from Exploding Topics Pro and are as of October 28, 2026.

For more on the trends behind blind boxes, take a look at:

• 7 Top Toy Industry Trends
• TikTok Shop Breaks Records on Black Friday With $500M Blitz
• 44 Trending Products to Sell (2026)

To size up blind box brands and their competitors, try the Semrush Traffic & Market toolkit. You can see any brand's website traffic, top markets, and audience. Start your free Semrush trial.