The recent craze on many social media platforms, such as social media, over kids’ collectables increases consumerism rates in the United States by around 700% in 2025 alone. The introduction of the Labubu by the company Pop Mart in 2015 became popular early in 2025 through their presence on TikTok.
These monster-like toys became popular after K-pop star Lisa from Blackpink was showcased with one of them. Since then, fans were eager to get their hands on one for themselves.
Eventually, it turned into a global phenomenon, causing a drastic increase in consumerism throughout many countries. Some may say it was like a domino effect, you buy one and feel like you need to buy as many as possible.
The massive increase in sales later led Pop Mart to start producing limited edition Labubu’s, and this got fans even more excited. Their drive to find these super-rare Labubus through the blind boxes sparked even more demand for these toys.
But there are more than just Labubu’s that are increasing our consumerism rates. Other ugly-cute monsters started gaining more and more attention, one in particular being Fugglers.
Fugglers are similar to Labubu’s in a way; they are both known for their ugly monster-like appearance. The customers constantly want to unbox the limited edition and rare creatures, but this is nothing we haven’t seen before.
This type of consumerism happened many times in the past for collectables such as Beanie Babies, Pokémon cards, and Fidget Toys. Even though these toys peaked many years apart, they all followed the same trends when it came to consumerism.
Beanie Babies became popular in the late 1900s into the early 2000s, but they still continued to be popular in the early 2010s. Now, these stuffed animals can be very expensive because of the number of discontinued and limited editions of Beanie Babies.
Pokémon cards are a little different when it comes to their downfall because they still have a decent amount of people trading them today. These cards have had many peaks, the first one originally launching in the ’90s, then the second one releasing in 2016 with Pokémon Go and the third one releasing during quarantine.
Many items like these cards become so popular because they are blind boxes, so they don’t know what they are getting till they purchase it. Customers are eager to find the rarest and most valuable out of each of the collections.
Especially during quarantine, when everyone was indoors, the only thing people could do was be online. Going into public stores and shops was dangerous, so people would shop online, which made it so much easier to rack up their shopping cart.
Alongside this surge of online shopping during the quarantine period, people were also spending huge amounts of money on cleaning and hygiene products to keep family members from getting or spreading the sickness.
Overall, consumerism is a big and growing issue in our world today. These new toys and collectables are just making the rates increase even more. As newer toys become more and more popular, they start to become tradeable, leading to even more increased production and consumption of these products.
