The year was 2025, and we had strayed far from God’s light. Arrive at any event – a fashion show, baby shower, wedding or picnic – and they’d greet you: six-inch monsters swinging from the clasp of a designer bag. 2025 was undoubtedly the year of the Labubu, the plush keyring with fluffy ears, pointed teeth and no soul. In the wake of 2024’s bag-charm craze, the Labubu emerged as the only acceptable accessory to hang from your other accessories, subsequently taking the world by storm. The non-exhaustive list of celebrities who have shown love for the ‘bu includes Rihanna, Madonna, Cher and Paris Hilton, while Dua Lipa and Kim K have been known to dangle one of two from their bags. Lady Gaga even had a custom one made into a miniature version of herself, Marc Jacobs hung one from his bag still in the plastic casing, while Mariah Carey and Katseye both posed at last year’s VMAs with their own terrifying little elves.

Up until now, their reign seemed impenetrable – nay, absolute. That was until Pop Mart, Labubu’s Chinese owner, dropped its annual earnings this March, and trouble was in paradise. Though its revenue skyrocketed in the last year, with the company reporting yearly earnings of $5.4 billion, its share price tumbled by 30 per cent. According to Reuters, this drop was apparently because “the annual revenue and earnings growth missed the consensus estimate from analysts”, i.e. the company didn’t make as much money as the hype originally projected. Sales of Labubu may be high – about 40 per cent of Pop Mart’s revenue – but that actually spooks investors, because what happens to revenue when the craze is over? Just like the 2008 housing crash, it looks like the Labubu craze might just be a bubble. And what do bubbles do? They burst!

Looking back on Labubu’s lifespan, it’s easy to see how this happened. Originally created in 2015 by Hong Kong artist Kasing Lung and inspired by creatures from Nordic folklore, Labubu was part of Lung’s The Monsters series, which first appeared in picture books and graphic novels. In 2019, Lung entered into an exclusive partnership with Pop Mart to turn his Monsters characters into real-life plush dolls. Initially a hit in Asian markets, Labubu began breaking into the mainstream in the West in 2024, driven in large part by Lisa, who described them as her secret obsession in a Vanity Fair video later that year. The way the dolls are packaged also helped fuel the trend: they come in “blind boxes”, meaning you don’t know which one you’ve got until you open it. Cut to a million TikToks of people hungrily tearing open boxes in search of their favourites, then heading straight back out to buy more when they don’t get what they want.

Though it was fun (?) while it lasted, this kind of hype-based trend can only go so far. Think about it: in 2026, how many people have you actually seen out and about proudly sporting a Labubu? A cursory glance at Google Trends shows that, after a massive peak in July 2025, interest in the term “Labubu” has been on a steady decline since last summer, remaining consistently low throughout 2026. While that suggests the trinket bubble has burst, Pop Mart is still doing its best to keep the hype alive. Last month, it announced an upcoming Labubu movie from Sony Pictures, with Wonka’s Paul King slated to direct and Tony-winning playwright Steven Levenson on screenplay duties. If they can assemble a stellar cast of famous Labubu superfans – the Lisas, Duas, Mariahs and Rihannas of the world – then maybe, just maybe, through some miraculous force of sheer will, the Labubu bubble will remain intact. Let’s wait and see.