Impossible to miss the Labu figurines, these mini-features designed by artist Kasing Lung, from the improbable crossing between a rabbit under amphetamine and a children’s plush. Having become a real cultural phenomenon, the little monsters are tearing up at gold prices, thanks to the formidable Pop Mart marketing strategy, which markets and distributes the license to the international.
Do you find the fashion for absurd labubu, a little stupid, downright zero? You are not alone. But behind the phenomenon, toe high by a good number of adults, a Long line of objects with a regressive aura. That the one who has never collected unnecessary gadgets throws us the first stone.
Diddl, Labubu, Kiki … La Peluche Comme Totem Générationnel
Before Labubu, there were the Diddl (these high legs born in Germany) and their paper, notebooks, gums, key chains, aroused the same collective frenzy to schoolchildren and college students from the years 90-2000. Having the rare gum, the pink letter sheet, the collector’s book was joining a community, displaying its tastes, sometimes even its purchasing power in the playground. Still before, the Kiki plush flanked by her pacifier became the star of school lessons.
Prized by children, but also by teens and adults, Labu acts like portable comforterswhich play the role of buffer between childhood and adolescence, then of memorial anchor in adulthood.
Identity markers
Why do these gadgets, objectively unnecessary, continue us so long? Because they serve as a social binder and an identity mirror. The Scoubidou, which invaded playgrounds from the 1970s in France, was both manual activity, collective ritual and social standard. The 90s and 2000s saw iconic objects brought ostensibly on the neck, on the kits or the course bags. Behind their gadget appearance, these charms were powerful markers of belonging (at a generation, a style, a tribe) and of identity transition.
Ded diddl to lab The object is ritualized : We no longer buy a simple babiole, but a passport for a micro-company of collectors, influencers and content creators. The phenomenon is logically exacerbated by social networks, to the point of transforming an epiphenomenon into social badge of international magnitude, with its codes, its market course, its collectors.
Blind box as a collection experience
If the labu also appeal to adults, it is also because the purchasing experience has as much as the figurine itself. The Blind Box effect, which is reminiscent of lootboxes in the world of video games, offers each figurine its history, its rarity, but also its speculative value on a boom market. The Labu phenomenon is only one wave among the others, and participates in updating a psychological mechanics as old as consumer society: the return to childhood requires the appropriation of softened, colorful, soft and reassuring objects … on a market where you need adult means to take full advantage of it.
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