Pop Mart is a brand that provides cool collectable figurines, cool toys, and cool stuff. In 2022 summer, a series of news about Pop Mart said it was a scam or a Ponzi scheme got viral. These discussions about its reputation and whether it is a scam got popular among the viewers on TikTok, or more broadly, Instagram, Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book), and WeChat details. For anyone who does not know about Pop Mart, it is basically a toy vending machine. The machine can be stationed in public spots like office buildings and shopping malls. Users would pay 156 RMB (about 25 USD) to buy a random toy (Kwandras, 2019). The toy inside the box is unknown until the consumer opens it. Each style of the toy has a design number, and there will be about 10 limited designs for each series. There is also a super limited toy design for each series, and it is usually priced twice the original series price (156 RMB). The opinion about whether Pop Mart is a scam may vary depending on pre-knowledge. Analyzing what Pop Mart is about, its logic on how to keep operating or profitable, and why its public reputation becomes controversial is meaningful.
Data shows that the sales of Pop Mart in 2022 summer were great, as each vending machine produced from 2000 RMB profit to 185000 RMB profit monthly on average. However, about 40% of the vending machines were shut down. The toy vending box brings happiness to customers and a sense of mystery to the popular “blind box” culture. However, some users started to complain about the amounts of the looked-for toy designs (known as “chase”) although the original intention was to collect the design series. The “blind box” toy type created the market value of the toy, just like trading cards. The non-scam opinion would address the toy trading business itself and its collaterals, such as the toy designer and the professional toy collector/ investor. Additionally, investing in toys should refer to policies like normal stock investments. The product and design behind the scenes and appreciations of this product type are also concerns of non-scam opinions.
History and Background of Pop Mart
Pop Mart first opened to the public in November 2010 at the Wangjing SOHO shopping center in Beijing, China. Since then, it actively collaborates with artists from different regions and countries, such as Hong Kong, Japan, Italy, Denmark, Argentina, Germany, Finland, and Canada. To date, Pop Mart has introduced over 30 designated artists on its mini figurine platform. Especially in recent years, Pop Mart’s artist collaboration products have rapidly entered the overseas consumer market. The avid collectors of Pop Mart Artemis figurines from Taiwan and the New York City shopping center of the “Little Detective Conan” and “Sanrio” art collaborations have been boosting the global virus-like enthusiasm of Pop Mart among one after another (Kwandras, 2019).
Key Factors Contributing to Pop Mart’s Success
Besides the uniqueness of their products and the new media marketing strategy, Pop Mart has also closely collaborated with established artists in the global trend scene, thus attracting the support of a large community of fans. It has become common in the market for toy brands and design houses to collaborate with artists. The collaborations often involve both brands designing a product or artwork together and later releasing it as an exclusive limited-edition item. However, Pop Mart has pushed the model further out of the toy design realm by teaming up with artists from various creative fields such as design, clothes, food, and music. Drawing the aesthetics from other visual art domains makes its products much more distinct compared to those produced by artists within the toy design realm. Such a move captures both the artist’s fandom and the audience of the taste directly, thus weaving a wider web of fans around Pop Mart products.
One such collaboration is the one with Shijun Wu, a designer from China’s clothing brand AderError. Using the pop-art aesthetics often seen in Wu’s creations, Pop Mart debuted two spectacular play sets named MUUMU and ZUMOOC with animal dolls modeled after cows and grasshoppers. They came along with a comic booklet depicting a humorous storyline on how two characters moved to the city and encountered difficulties integrating into an unfamiliar environment. With vivid colors, clear and concise outlines of the objects, and a poetic storytelling style, the comic brings juvenile naivety into a design practice filled with cynical skepticism. Such storytelling design style is distinct compared to most products in the current market, further attracting waves of fans both for the artist and Pop Mart.
Unlike most of the artist collaborations where each artist releases a set product design, this collaboration stretched for a longer duration with a series of events taking place, thus keeping the audience engaged for a longer period of time. At the dawn of the collaboration, a video ad was released on Instagram, during which an animal plush toy marched from grassland to a busy unfocused industrial town all by itself, observing the fast pace of urbanization with stillness. The tone of the video and the storytelling in both the comic and product design resonated with similar interests of a young generation disenchanted with the inauthentic fast consumerism lifestyle. Feelings of loneliness and nostalgic longing coalesced into a large pool of empathy toward the story, thus garnering initial attention to Pop Mart.
Collaborations with Artists
Founded by the art toy enthusiast Aki Wang in 2010, Pop Mart is a leading global entertainment brand that specializes in art toys and the broader pop toy industry. Pop Mart commenced its international expansion in 2020 and achieved profits of over 90 million USD in 2022, with 51.4% coming from outside of China. Committed to bringing happiness and wonder to customers, Pop Mart is persevering in the mission of “to provide something surprising for everyone”. The highlights of Pop Mart’s models, including collaborations with artists and increasing memberships, as well as future global expansion, are further demonstrated. Data has been analyzed to research self-collected models using thematic analysis directly related to Pop Mart, being classified into seven categories including its collaborations with artists.
To enhance the competitiveness of art treasures in the consumer market and bring different opportunities for emerging creators, Pop Mart has collaborated with many outstanding artists, designers, illustrators, and animators, so each IP is creative, unique, and contains rich stories. More than 100 IPs have been formed in this way, and the ability to curate and manage these IPs is an essential element of international expansion. Pop Mart provides a platform for artists to share art globally and connect with audiences. By launching limited collaboration collections with popular artists, designers, or brands, the fandom community has been attracted and great attention has been generated in this way.
Some successful case studies are cited to elaborate on this factor. The most representative collaboration is with a Japanese 2D illustrator, who designed cartoon characters with “big head and small body” proportions and elements such as pop rings, gooey plastic skins, cat ears, and colored glasses. These characters echo what elementary school students (about seven years old) imagine and greatly influence this generation in the parallel universe of “pop toy craze”. Nevertheless, this collection is highly sought after among Chinese Zoomers (those born in the late 1990s to early 2010s), who are thrilled to relive innocent childhood memories through the products.
Another successful case study is the recent partnership with Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli. The first collaboration collection “My Neighbor Totoro x Pop Mart” was released in March 2023 and sold out immediately, generating millions in sales revenue within a month. The collection includes “Totoro”, “Mini Totoro”, and “Tiny Totoro” with exquisitely designed details and interactivity matching with animated clips. These collaborations convey emotions and core values through nostalgia, innocence, and exclusiveness across generations.
Impact of Pop Mart on the Toy Industry
Emerging toy company Pop Mart may not be well known outside of China, but amongst the toy and collectible community, the company has generated buzz for its designer toys and collectibles. By implementing a carefully designed marketing strategy, Pop Mart has quickly captured market interest from all ages. Here is a breakdown of Pop Mart’s business model and the impact it has had on the global toy industry.
In the past few years, the term “Dunny” may be recognized by avid collectors and fans of designer toys. Originally created by artist and designer Frank Kozik for Kidrobot, the Dunnys were a series of blank 3-inch vinyl figures sculpted in the shape of rabbits to give artists a platform for self-expression. The artist-designed toys would become a success amongst both toy and art collectors, creating a new market for high-quality affordable low-edition toys. Kidrobot was able to attract famous artists such as Gary Baseman, Kaws, and Jeremy Fish. In the years that followed, designer toy collecting would explode with a number of competing brands and new characters. The Dunny finished its run with its 20th series in 2021, but the widespread popularity of designer toys did not end there. In recent years, brands such as Uglydoll, Babo, and Miffy have attracted both adult and child collectors alike, resulting in a new wave of interest in the designer toy industry.
Pop Mart, a toy company founded in Beijing, China, is the current household name amongst toy and collectible fans. Guaranteed returns on investment, quality designs from established artists, an affordable price point, and a focus on collectibles for all ages are just some of the ways that Pop Mart’s business model differs from competitors, along with the buzz created from social media influencers and branded marketing campaigns. The fastest-growing toy company of 2020 and dubbed “The Pop Mart Craze,” Pop Mart has had a significant impact on the designer toy industry, and the effects do not seem to be slowing down any time soon.
Trends in Designer Toy Collecting
Collectible designer toys have become a major trend in toy collecting. The popularity of various brands of designer toys such as Kaws, Whittle, and Bearbrick, figures of which can cost from tens of dollars to thousands of dollars, has been steadily on the rise over the past few years. Notably, Kaws figures that were previously purchased at retail price from local stores in the United States have recently been selling for prices above $1000 on the resale market. The rise of the designer toy trend has been famously termed the “urban vinyl” trend, with origins stemming from the mixing of street art and custom vinyl figures in the late 1990s. These designer toys are catapulted into a complex interplay of high resale values, societal symbols of status, countercultural resistance, and consumer goods at the same time.
Pop Mart has successfully infiltrated and captured the rising designer vinyl toy collection trend, and its key strategies are worth examining. In marketing and brand positioning, Pop Mart has established its identity as a combination of ubiquitous accessibility and niche diversity appeal by delivering reasonable price points for both the masses and the collectors while utilizing pop aesthetics designed by different artists to target different consumer groups. On the product level, a wide collection of myriad sets and characters are released to satiate daily desires for collecting. This is epitomized through the long-running Mystery Box system, where each blind box can be interpreted as a native form of gambling, and consequently, temptation for financial gain. Additionally, constraints on completionism imposed by some designer toy sets, paired with constant marketing stimulations to “get them all,” create an addictive experience for consumers. Lastly, Pop Mart has propelled this business model into success through a diversified form of marketing and distribution channels, encompassing the offline retail experience, selling through shopping malls, shopping centers, and even vending machines, as well as influencer marketing through social media platforms such as Xiaohongshu or Instagram.
Consumer Behavior and the Pop Mart Phenomenon
Over recent years, the “blind box” toys market has ignited a fervor among consumers, particularly among young girls in China, resulting in the emergence of a plethora of such brands. This cultural phenomenon has sparked intrigue and concern regarding the shift in social values and dynamics between brands and consumers.
With the rapid expansion of blind box toy brands, their consumer demographics have also broadened. Initially targeting young consumers in second-tier cities, the consumer base has now propelled brands into the mainstream market with emerging brands like Pop Mart’s “Molly” blind boxes and “Snoopy” blind boxes for fans. The branding has expanded to appeal to young office workers, with promotion strategies centered on WeChat pranks and workplace sharing. However, little research has delved into blind box brands’ systemic nuances in addressing evolving consumer needs, and analyzing the ability of brands to traverse generational and urban divides remains scarce. Also unclear is the need for alternative blind box brands amidst an overwhelming supply, why familiar blind box brands are still chosen, and the systemic shifts in consumer interests between traditional commodities, new brand combinations, and Pop Mart blind boxes.
The single blind box product of a brand may take on diverse meanings depending on consumer characteristics including their age, gender, occupation, culture, and city. Such capabilities in commodity transformation and multi-dimensional interpretations call for in-depth exploration of consumers’ inner workings and their relations with commodities. Scholars in various fields posit theories and concepts justifying the existence of commodities in interpreting consumers as unitary minimal forms, overlooking the complexity of their inner workings, social relations, divergent interpretations of commodities, as well as the meanings brands may extend to varied actors (consumers, commodities, performative spaces). Pop Mart, as a leading company in the first-tier, contemporary consumer culture in China, widely contributes to an understanding of brands’ logic and capabilities in relation to divisibility, economic divide, branding, and blind box design. The company is driven by the possibilities generated by ambiguously addressing diversified commodity meanings, pliable consumer positions (investors, saviors), blind box brands as complex mediators (community founders, platforms, storytellers, enablers), and inclusion (mimicking paradoxes). Pop Mart reverts the economic divide with cheap blind boxes and thus is widely considered a savior for young consumer victims engulfed by toy colleges and familial hierarchies.
Consumers take pleasure in their simultaneous inclusion in toys’, artist’s, and brand’s communities as potential investors. Actively manipulating the valuation of blind box commodities, consumers are perceived as the company’s enabling economies. However, growing commodity demands render initial joys invaluably futile and caveat harsh growth and responsibility desires that compromise inclusion. Blind boxes as complex commodities and observers bridging blind box enjoyment, branding, technology, etc., and spectacles, mediate consumers’ perceptions of corporate community capitalism and turn concerns inclusive moral questions. Thus, the coherent relation with brands is questioned and the paradox enchantment jeopardized. In such fragmented relations, addressing the largely shared toys’ narratives and marketing to include blind box communal competition is crucial for brands not to lose consumer attention. The need for further research on branding capabilities in mediating further inclusion and taking responsibility for included fragile relations is necessary.
Psychological Motivations for Collecting
The Pop Mart craze has captivated the attention of consumers in China and around the globe, exhibiting a rapid rise in popularity reminiscent of many successful toy brands in the past. Pop Mart is a Chinese company specializing in toy vending machines, primarily targeting 20 to 40-year-old women. It focuses on mysterious and blind boxes, a characteristic which has been adopted by the design and fashion industries. In January 2019, Pop Mart went public on China’s A-share market and saw explosive growth in both dealers and users, accelerating the toy trend among the younger generation. Such razzmatazz around the Pop Mart craze has become the new normal in contemporary life with UGC (user-generated content) such as video uploads on how to unbox toys, compilations of irony on being fooled, and buzz like “Can you guess which one is in my Pop Mart blind box?” inundating video sharing platforms such as Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
The Pop Mart craze causes a heated discussion online: some individuals question the rationale behind the fad, while others defend that it is reasonable to buy such products since everyone has the freedom of economic activities, and the only rationale should be a preference for beautiful toys. To better understand this rationale, and especially the preference for Moly, the mascot of Pop Mart, a qualitative study was conducted to delve into how consumers form their behavior regarding the Pop Mart craze from the perspective of psychological motivations for collecting.
The significance of this research topic lies in the fact that the rise of Pop Mart toys not only reflects a fundamental social change in China but also reveals a deep psychological motivation behind individual toy consumption behavior regarding this fad. Despite an upsurge in relevant research on toy consumption and toy design worldwide, few attempts have been made to clarify this current toy phenomenon, which is essential to help more individuals better comprehend contemporary life, and to limit blind box toys which cause potential injustice and social issues. For the toy industries, the understanding of the Pop Mart craze may provide insights into how to design toys for the same purposes and reveal challenges to the current ethical standards of product dissemination.
Future Outlook and Sustainability of the Pop Mart Craze
Amidst the Pop Mart craze that swept China’s Gen Z earlier this year, questions concerning sustainability loom. After all, like any trend, doubt surrounds how long this will last. A recent report found that one-third of e-commerce “pop-ins” drop off in only six months. Importantly, this focus on long-term outlooks will ultimately change the perspective on an otherwise short-lived obsession. “Blind-boxing” is said to be a “transitional innovation” amid an overarching concern within the Asian retail industry over slowing consumer spending. The concern extends to gaming, live-stream shopping and avocado toast. But a string of successful “retail-tainment” thus far — limited product releases and idol paraphernalia — has staved off overly bleak predictions; the question now is how long these fads can last (Alexander et al., 2018).
Strangely, Pop Mart could attempt to build a sort of Disneyland of blind-boxing to actively stave off its own doom. While costume mascot characters are ubiquitous of theme parks, its own characters like “Molly” and “Dream Series” are popular enough to warrant similar attention to developing social media extravaganzas beyond mere “vending machine-flavored snacks.” Or perhaps, realizing that the core attraction of blind boxing is the surprise and gamble, Pop Mart could create a variation concept entirely different from its parents by selling characters vaguely reminiscent of the originals. Experts speculated that two key elements of Pop Mart’s success — accessible price points and high product quality — would make it difficult for other brands to replicate, but they nonetheless could escape stagnation through imitation in another way altogether.