LABUBU DOLLS AS SACRED OBJECTS
labubu and karl marx summer <333
Hey there, party people. Welcome to the party, and happy solstice. Or maybe it was yesterday? I get my days confused.
In case you haven’t heard the news, I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons. Also, Labubu dolls.
How do we consume all the right content to cultivate the most perfectly whimsical, online-but-in-person presence? What’s your song of the summer, and will you queue it at our party, or do you just post it a lot on your Instagram story?
I will outline my thoughts today with an illustration, à la Foldables™. I love educational art!
Labubu dolls have taken the world by storm. Blind box toys created and sold by the Chinese company POP MART. $27.99 for one plush keychain when purchased directly from POP MART, but part of the trend is understanding how absurdly challenging it is to accomplish that. Knockoff Labubu dolls—Lafufu dolls—have appeared, turning secondhand purchase into its own gamble: are you paying $60 for an authentic Labubu, or are you about to pay double the retail price for a wonky copy of the actual thing?
“The world” that seems most critically affected by this “storm” is American Gen Z-ers who spend a non-negligible amount of their time on some iteration of girls-and-gays TikTok. My Culture Reporter in New York City says that you can’t walk a block without seeing one.
But my demographic determination is based purely on vibe—it doesn’t capture the full picture. Cue the TikToks of your guy coworkers who warm to the dolls over time, the grandmothers who adore them, the dads who buy them before their daughters, the children throwing fits over their fakes.
The Wall Street Journal cares about Labubu dolls, and so do NBA players, and so does that little girl I saw in a coffee shop yesterday who had one clipped to her Lululemon Belt Bag. Yes, her mom was your classic North Texas bleach-blonde thin conservative rich white woman. Thank you for asking.
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Carl Marks says: “A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour…”
Commodities are goods and services! Labor is the work needed for those goods and services! In capitalist exchange, commodities become severed from the labor that created them—the value of a commodity is determined by its perceived value in the market. There is no objective price for anything!
“In the same way the light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of something outside the eye itself. But, in the act of seeing, there is at all events, an actual passage of light from one thing to another, from the external object to the eye.”
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So labor and material are exchanged in the purchase of a Labubu doll (an actual passage of light from one thing to another). But the exchange perceived (the seemingly objective form of something outside the eye itself) consists of a lot more than factory production and colored fur.
Social understandings inform the perceived value of the object. And in a state of hyper-consumption, commodities don’t just serve as objects with abstract value; part of an object’s value is how they define the consumer.
The Labubu trend, in other words, is a prime example for how modern objects take on metaphysical significance for young buyers. If you think the dolls are merely ugly and stupid, think harder.
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Have you seen the people that strap them into tiny carseats and keep them locked in plastic cases?
These toys incite excitement and care. They come in different colors and have faces and fingers. They’re not just the new Beanie Babies or the new fidget spinners or the new Stanley Cups. Narratives of trend psychology and blind box economics certainly apply to Labubu dolls, but I think more than earlier trends, these dolls demonstrate identity-as-consumerism.
With capitalism as our religion, items perceived to have high value become morally good, or at least more good than things that are less collectively desired. Why is NPR writing about Labubus instead of any other POP MART toy?
And online trends offer us community. Who are we in-grouping with and why? Does it mean we’re fashionable or whimsical or basic to buy a Labubu? Do we align with the people who refuse Labubu dolls entirely?
All items, by virtue of the phenomena above, act to externalize our identity. Do you own a Labubu or a Lafufu? What does that say about you, and what do you want it to say about you? What kind of soap do you buy, what kind of clothes, what kind of headphones? In late-stage capitalism, every consumer decision becomes an opportunity to self-define. Modern aesthetics are articulated through brand loyalties, and personal values are held and tested against owning the right items.
Personal brand? We’re all walking Amazon storefronts—at once advertising commodities and expecting commodities to advertise us. What’s your song of the summer? Which trends are you following? How do you self-style and what does your stuff signal about who you are?
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The urge to own a Labubu captures true yearning in the age of the profit-seeking internet. You can only think they’re cute if you can see them, and you can only see them if you’re being fed them. Our sense of self has become displaced by the objects that give us an idea of who we might be, as dictated by algorithmic consumerism.
Marx compared the value of a commodity to color as “the objective form of something outside the eye itself”. But what happens when that objective form is our perceived selfhood?
Maybe you wanted a specific Labubu that you did or did not unbox, maybe you met your Facebook Marketplace Labubu seller in a supermarket parking lot, maybe you finally snagged one after days of sitting through POP MART TikTok lives.
The ownership of a Labubu presents a unique journey, the desire for a Labubu presents a unique set of values, and how we negotiate these personal meanings within a single trendy object makes Labubu dolls an object of modern transcendence. Commodity fetishism at its finest! The dolls are animated with status, intention, and meaning, everywhere you go.
If it’s not a Labubu for you, it is definitely something else. The objective is not to deride those who want a Labubu doll, but to consider what it might mean to want one so badly. What is your Labubu doll?
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I like the dolls. The pastels are pretty, the faces just weird enough to be interesting. I’ve tried to get one from the Exciting Macaron series on the POP MART app. My favorite is Toffee. But I’d be happy with Lychee Berry. Or Sea Salt Coconut. Or Sesame Bean.
I am no better than the beast, and I don’t know what my favorite Labubu says about me. What would I do with one? Put it on my desk, and let it watch me write this post? As per usual, I have no answers, but I’m thinking thinking thinking.
Happy Labubu Summer, everyone. I wish you the best of luck in the POP MART trenches. My song of the summer is “The Boy In the Bubble” by Paul Simon. Thank you for asking!
I still think they’re a little bit ugly 🫣
my SOTS is “The Way” by Fastball