You’re rushing down the concourse at Denver International Airport to get to the gate in time for your flight. Others are frantic too — families coming from or going on vacations, business people with computer bags slung over their shoulders. But out of the corner of your eye, you see a flash of pink, a face with a crazed grin of jagged fang-like teeth and somewhat sinister eyes.
And you have to stop. You might have to shop
The creature that caught your attention is a Labubu, the creepy-cute plushy dolls, licensed from the pages of a kid’s picture book based on Nordic mythology, that have become the hottest collectible in the world. You might have seen them dangling from bags carried by celebrities, like Rihanna and David Beckham (really), and the backers of the Boxtastic pop-up shops on the B and C concourses are hoping you can see yourself — or your kids — adding a similar bit of bling to your carry on.
Owners Michael Ye and Mimi Luong opened their first Boxtastic in November on Concourse B, and last week they opened a second on Concourse C. The couple operate Luong’s parents’ long-running Asian gift emporium, Truong An, in Denver’s Far East Center. Truong An has become social-media famous as the local source for Labubus, which is how DIA learned of Luong and Ye and became the first U.S. airport to offer Labubus to shoppers on the fly.
A third Boxtastic is scheduled to open in February on Concourse A.
Calling Labubus “dolls” is a bit of a disservice. They’re really collectibles, and in a way, status symbols, because they’re not just toys for tots, or for children to play with. They’ve become hugely popular because a bevy of celebrities have shown off Labubus on their social media.
“If anything, it’s for teenagers and even around 18 and up,” Luong says. “They’re starting to make their own money, and they want to get themselves something, something useless, something that proves that they have disposable income.”
And what better way to show you have the bucks to spare than to show off a Labubu like the famous folks have?
Blind-box it up
Boxtastic stores are compact and jammed with merchandise. Featuring a friendly pink theme, the stores easily catch the attention of travelers, whether they’re waiting for a flight (delayed by high winds, for instance) or rushing to their gates.
There are no other toy stores at the Denver airport. But then again, Labubus may appeal to children but they’re not just a toy. They appeal to adults too, especially those who have a collect-them-all mentality. Or, grown-ups who like to gamble. The twist with Labubus, and a brilliant marketing move by their manufacturer Pop Mart, is the surprise element of blind boxes.
Blind boxes are a direct descendant of Japan’s Gachapon vending machines that spit out small toys in plastic capsules. People drop their money in, turn the lever and hope to get something out that they want. Blind boxes can even be traced back even farther, to packs of gum containing baseball cards and the grandaddy of them all, Cracker Jacks with the surprise toy included in each box, as the jingle promised for generations, ”candy-coated popcorn, peanuts and a prize!”
But the Labubu blind box isn’t available for peanuts.
A current Pop Mart blind box, including Labubus, costs $60 at Boxtastic and at Truong An. Luong and Ye made the decision not to raise prices at their DIA outlets while other retailers add in the various fees and costs required to sell at the airport. The past year of importing and reselling Labubus from China have meant they have already had to raise prices because of the Trump administration’s tariffs and the higher costs related to supply-chain logistics.
Partly because of the cost, Luong gives an extra measure of customer service to people willing to pay for a Labubu (or other characters in the Pop Mart line) blind box. That is, unless the customer is lucky enough to find a “secret” in their box — like the very valuable Labubu card that Ye found. If they were just hoping for a different color or character than the one they pulled out of the box, Boxtastic will exchange it for another that is open and available. She does the same at Truong An.
“Yeah, we trade on site. So let’s just say, like you really wanted the blue one, and I actually have the blue one, I’ll just swap it for you,” she says. “Most of the time they’re happy with what they get. But at this point, a lot of people already have a collection. They’re just missing a few different colors. So they come (to Truong An) and look at the trading wall, and then if there’s a color they want, they just basically open their box to try to go for the secret one. And if it’s not the secret one, we just swap it for them.”
That kindness leads to more sales, she says. “I have people coming, like, on a weekly basis to see if we got the color that they’re looking for or that they’re missing, just so they can buy another one to swap out. A lot of other places don’t do trade-ins, so basically, you’re stuck with whatever color you get.”
The menagerie of the Labubu universe
Labubus are part of a series of characters, The Monsters, sold by Beijing-based Pop Mart. The company licenses the intellectual property rights from artists — in the case of Labubus, Hong Kong-born artist Kasing Lung, who was raised in the Netherlands and is based in Belgium — and manufactures a multitude of products under the licenses.
Labubus began as part of Lung’s “The Monsters” picture books based on elves and spirits from his childhood. Labubu figurines debuted in 2015 but didn’t make a commercial impact until Pop Mart licensed them in 2019, and then didn’t explode until last year. Now there are over 300 Labubu characters, and many are on display at Boxtastic shops.
Hello Kitty used to be the undisputed queen of cute critters. The “kawaii” (it means “cute” in Japanese) icon was created by Sanrio in the 1970s and shows up everywhere from toys and dolls to desktop vacuum cleaners (really) and even a brand of ramen, but everyone is also familiar with generations of other fad dolls from Trolls and Beanie Babies to Cabbage Patch Kids.
Labubus sales were strong at Truong An throughout the summer and into the holiday season, and during the first few weeks at Boxtastic. “It’s better than I thought it would be,” Luong says. “Michael and I chose an amount that we need to reach that goal every day, and so far, for the past three weeks, we have been close to that number or over.”
It’s a different dynamic from being in a shopping area like the Far East Center, or the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival, where Truong An was a vendor for years.
“At the airport, it’s like constant rush, basically, like, after a flight goes out, another flight comes in, and then you wait, like, 30 minutes, there’s people walking around and looking at stuff, waiting to kill time, and then they go on their flight, and then another group comes out,” Luong said, “but you’re always meeting new people. And I think the item sells itself.”
Are Labubus heading for la boo-hoos?
Luong and Ye, as well as Provenzano Resources Inc., the consulting company that signs and manages the pop-up retailers and vendors at DIA and invited Boxtastic to the airport, obviously have gone all in on the Labubu craze.
But some nonbelievers think Labubus may be crashing — Pop Mart stock has dropped 40% in the past four months (after the Chinese government criticized the gambling nature of the blind-box format) and fear that Labubus are no longer as popular as before on the resale market.
Black Friday sales weren’t as high as expected, though the numbers are still impressive — up 400% year to date over last year, when celebrities first discovered the dolls. Will they be like Beanie Babies, the forgotten fad toys of yesteryear?
Pop Mart is banking on Labubus’ staying power. The company opened a theme park in China and has one planned for Canada, and has signed a Sony Pictures deal for a Labubu movie. These creepy-cute dolls have legs.
Ye, who has a long-term vision that acknowledges Pop Mart’s smarts and includes a future that expands beyond a Denver gift shop or even airport pop-ups. “I think Pop Mart has its sights on something much bigger than just Labubu. It’s the whole market.”
He notes that Sanrio, the company that owns the Hello Kitty franchise, has a hugely popular brand, but they haven’t been leaders in the new world of modern commerce. “Hello Kitty tailed Pop Mart into blind boxes,” he says. “Hello Kitty is Blockbuster and Pop Mart is Netflix.”
It should have been Sanrio that thought of blind boxes to supercharge sales with collectors, he adds. “They had the characters, they had the family, they had the marketing. They had the history, they had the brand loyalty.”
Pop Mart is still growing. Along with the amusement parks and movie, Pop Mart is opening retail stores in major cities that launch to rhapsodic media coverage and long lines of fans waiting to buy up blind boxes. “I think they’re in it for the long run,” Ye says.
And so are Ye and Luong, who have inked six-month deals with Provenzano Resources to operate Boxtastic.