The excitement around Labubu has never depended on a long plot, even as POP MART has turned the character into a global collecting phenomenon. For many collectors, the appeal lives in the object itself: the surprise of opening a blind box, the urge to complete a set, the character design, and the feeling of belonging to a community that recognizes the same visual language.
That is why POP MART’s next phase is interesting. The company has already proved it can make characters collectible. Now, as Labubu moves toward film and other entertainment formats, it has to prove those characters can hold attention when the mystery box is gone and the audience is asked to stay for the story.
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Why Labubu fandom now needs a narrative
At DMA Singapore 2026, Jeremy Lee, POP MART’s head of Middle East and South Asia, framed storytelling as one of the company’s unfinished capabilities.
“I feel that storytelling is something that we’ll need to continue to have. And in fact, I feel that it’s a capability that POP MART, perhaps at this point in time, has not fully mastered,” Leesaid.
That admission matters because POP MART is pushing its characters into formats that ask more from audiences than collecting does. A blind box can create anticipation in a few seconds. A film, series or entertainment franchise has to sustain character motivation, world-building and emotional continuity for much longer.
The company’s 2025 annual report shows how much commercial weight now sits behind that challenge.
POP MART generated RMB37.12 billion in revenue in 2025, up 184.7% year on year. The company also said THE MONSTERS, the character family that includes Labubu, generated RMB14.16 billion in annual revenue, according to POP MART’s 2025 annual report.
The issue is no longer whether Labubu can attract attention. It is whether that attention can be converted into a richer entertainment relationship without losing the simplicity that made the character easy to collect, display and recognize.
Pop Mart is getting smaller to scale smarter. Marketers, take notes
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How POP MART is building an IP ecosystem
POP MART is already testing what happens when a character leaves the shelf.
The business has expanded into food, experiential retail, jewellery, home products, digital experiences and entertainment. In Singapore, for example, POP BAKERY gives fans another way to encounter characters outside the toy aisle. Leedescribed these formats as entry points into the wider IP portfolio rather than disconnected experiments.
That logic changes the role of the product. The blind box remains the introduction, but not necessarily the endpoint.
Someone might first encounter a character through a dessert, a collaboration or a physical store. Another person may enter through a creator, an artist signing or eventually a film. The brand then has multiple chances to turn recognition into familiarity.
This is closer to how entertainment franchises grow than how traditional toy brands expand. The value comes from giving people repeated reasons to spend time with the same characters in different settings.
Why collaborations work as fandom bridges
Collaborations are one of the clearest examples of how POP MART uses fandom as a discovery engine.
Lee pointed to DIMOO’s collaboration with Pixar as a form of customer acquisition. A Pixar fan who does not know DIMOO may enter the store because the collaboration feels familiar, then discover other POP MART characters once inside.
That is a different job from simply borrowing another brand’s visibility. The collaboration works because it creates a bridge between two existing fan systems.
POP MART also gives artists a role in deciding whether those bridges make sense. Leesaid the IP artist has to agree that an external brand fits the character before the commercial team proceeds.
That helps protect one of the company’s most important assets: the sense that each character has its own identity rather than functioning as a blank surface for endless licensing.
The creator layer matters here too. POP MART does not only sell Molly, Labubu or Hirono. It also keeps artists such as Kenny Wong and Kasing Lung visible through signings and other fan interactions, giving collectors a human story behind the character.
What marketers should know about collectible IP
POP MART’s next phase shows what happens when a brand built on collecting starts behaving more like an entertainment company.
- Fandom can begin before deep storytelling exists.
Labubu became culturally recognizable largely through design, scarcity, collectability and community behavior. A fully developed narrative universe was not required at the start. That suggests brands can sometimes build emotional attachment through rituals and objects before they build long-form stories. - Storytelling becomes more important as the format expands.
A character on a shelf can remain mysterious. A character in a film needs more structure. As brands move from products into entertainment, the threshold for world-building rises. - Collaborations can recruit adjacent fandoms.
The DIMOO and Pixar example shows why a collaboration can work best when it gives one community a credible reason to discover another. The strongest bridge is not logo visibility. It is a recognizable point of cultural entry. - Creators can help preserve character identity.
Keeping artists involved in partnership decisions gives POP MART another filter against overextension. That matters when a popular IP is suddenly attractive to many potential partners. - The product can be the first chapter, not the whole story.
For POP MART, the blind box still matters because it creates the first emotional moment. The larger opportunity is what happens after that moment, when retail, food, entertainment, artists and collaborations keep the character present in a fan’s life.
For marketers, the broader lesson is that fandom does not automatically become a franchise. Attention, collecting and community can create a strong base, but each new format asks the brand to earn a different kind of interest.
POP MART has already built a system that can move people from one touchpoint to another. The next test is whether Labubu and its other characters can carry enough narrative weight to make those journeys feel like one connected world rather than a series of successful products.
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