In May 2026, Pop Mart's online sales in China fell for the first time since 2024. In September, the company behind WAKUKU reported that one pouty plush boy had done 369 million yuan in a year. We did not plan to stock both of them side by side, but we did, and the two shelves have been having an argument ever since. So let us have it properly: Labubu versus WAKUKU, five rounds, with the honest caveat that we sell both and would happily sell you either.
Round 1: what they actually are
Labubu is a monster. Kasing Lung, a Hong Kong-born illustrator raised in the Netherlands, drew her for his Nordic-folklore picture books in 2015, and Pop Mart turned the cast (The Monsters) into vinyl in 2019. The whole appeal is the contradiction: a creature with nine serrated teeth and a face that looks like it is about to bite you, wrapped in a soft plush body and sold as a bag charm.
WAKUKU is a human. A small boy with a matte vinyl face, a unibrow, and an expression that reads somewhere between bored and about to throw something, dressed in a fuzzy animal onesie. The studio that makes him, Letsvan, calls the design principle "gap moe": the gap between the tough little face and the cute costume is the joke. He was created in Shenzhen and now sits inside Here Group, the pop-toy arm of a Nasdaq-listed company called QuantaSing, which is why our vendor tag reads HereToy.
Round to Labubu on originality, because a monster from a picture book is a stranger idea than a grumpy kid. Round to WAKUKU on relatability, because everyone knows a kid who looks exactly like that.
Round 2: the blind box math
Both run the same game. A standard WAKUKU plush pendant series comes in a case, you buy a single sealed box, and the hidden "secret" figure runs at roughly one in 72 boxes. Pop Mart's recent Monsters pendant lines run the same 1-in-72 odds on the secret. Neither company is being generous, and neither is lying about it.
Where they differ is availability. Our THE MONSTERS Coca-Cola Series blind box is $19.99 and still in stock, the Finding Mokoko Series is also $19.99, and the Wacky Mart Series is $29.99 and down to our last three. The THE MONSTERS x One Piece crossover sold out while this post sat in drafts, which rather proves the point. That is what Labubu stock looks like at a normal retailer in late 2026: a few series, thin, and gone the week a new drop hits TikTok. The WAKUKU Fuzzy Trendy Fun Party Series, which is the flagship line (bear and rabbit onesies in candy colors), is $25.99 and we can actually keep it on the wall. The Fox & Bunny Trick or Treat Series is $20.99 and is the right one this month for obvious reasons, and the On A Roll Series, also $20.99, dresses him in Y2K streetwear named after pager codes like 520 and 888.
Round to WAKUKU, by a lot. A blind box you can buy at retail price beats a blind box you have to buy at three times retail from a guy on Facebook Marketplace.
WAKUKU Fuzzy Trendy Fun Party · $25.99
WAKUKU Fox & Bunny Trick or Treat · $20.99
THE MONSTERS Coca-Cola · $19.99
THE MONSTERS Finding Mokoko · $19.99
Round 3: the plush in hand
This is where we have to be fair to Labubu. Pop Mart's vinyl-face plush is the reason the category exists, and the face sculpt on a Monsters pendant is still sharper than almost anything else on our plush wall. WAKUKU's face is matte and simpler, closer to a doll than a character, and the plush bodies are thicker and heavier. If you want something to hang from a bag and get complimented on, Labubu wins. If you want something to squeeze, WAKUKU wins, and the bigger open-stock pieces like the WAKUKU x Dragons Toothless at $39.99 (yes, that is a licensed How to Train Your Dragon crossover, and it is the single best thing on the HereToy shelf) are the ones people pick up and do not put down.
Call it a draw, leaning Labubu for the sculpt and WAKUKU for the material.
Round 4: the big boys
Both brands have an oversized tier, and this is where the two shelves get funny. Pop Mart's big-ticket item on our wall is the Hirono Living Wild plush doll at $79.99, which is a different character entirely, because oversized Labubu basically does not exist at retail anymore. HereToy, meanwhile, ships 800% scale WAKUKU: the Angel 800% is $249.99 and we have two, and the Fuzzy Trendy Fun Party 800% figures (Bear, Mischief-Maker) are $226.99 each with one of each left. These are the pieces people photograph in the store. They are not subtle, and they are not for everyone, but a shop that can put a two-hundred-dollar WAKUKU on the counter right now has something Pop Mart retailers cannot offer.
Round to WAKUKU for showing up. Round to Labubu for the resale value, which we will get to.
WAKUKU x Dragons Toothless · $39.99
WAKUKU Angel 800% · $249.99
WAKUKU 800% Bear · $226.99
Hirono Living Wild plush · $79.99
Round 5: the companies, and where the money is going
Here is the part the unboxing videos skip. Pop Mart is a Hong Kong-listed giant that sold a human-sized Labubu at auction for about $150,000 in 2025, and then watched its China online sales drop 5% year over year in May 2026, 25% below its late-2025 monthly average, according to e-commerce data reported by the South China Morning Post on June 18. Analysts are openly using the phrase "waning IP popularity." The overseas business is still growing, and Labubu is not going anywhere, but the days of every series selling out in 90 seconds are over, which is why we can actually stock it.
Here Group is the opposite shape. On September 23 its parent reported fiscal 2026 revenue of 596.8 million yuan, with WAKUKU alone at 369.3 million, about 62% of the whole business. It has 22 IPs, and the newer ones are already real: SIINONO, a plush-doll line launched in late 2025, did 92.7 million yuan in its first year, and ZIYULI and the others now make up more than 40% of quarterly revenue. On our shelf that is the SIINONO Want to Tell You A Secret Series at $25.99 and the ZIYULI Chinese Romance Series at $20.99, which has the most detailed sculpts in the entire HereToy collection. The honest footnote is that the same report showed gross margin falling to 25.8% and channel inventory running high, which is corporate for "we made too much." That is good for you as a buyer this year and a warning for anyone buying WAKUKU as an investment.
Round to Labubu on resale and name recognition. Round to WAKUKU on momentum.
SIINONO Want to Tell You A Secret · $25.99
ZIYULI Chinese Romance · $20.99
CRYBABY Wild but Cutie · $24.99
The verdict (and the counterargument)
If you already own a Labubu, buy a WAKUKU, because the two look great on the same bag and you will be early for once. If you own neither and want the one everyone recognizes, it is still Labubu, and the Coca-Cola series at $19.99 is the cheapest real one we have. If you want the best actual toy for the money, it is WAKUKU, and specifically the Fuzzy Trendy Fun Party box or the Toothless. And if you are the kind of person who buys a blind box because the character made you laugh, WAKUKU's face is funnier. We said it.
The counterargument is real, though. Labubu has a decade of lore, a named artist, museum-level collabs and a resale market, and WAKUKU has a corporate IP portfolio and a parent company that is still losing money. Trends like this have a half-life, and the one with the deeper roots usually outlasts the one with the steeper curve. Pop Mart's own CRYBABY line, $24.99 a box, is a reminder that the company has more than one character, and it belongs to neither camp. The smart money in blind boxes is the same as it always was: buy the one you like, open it immediately, and never pay a scalper.
Everything above ships flat $5 anywhere in the US, and first orders get 10% off with code WELCOME10. The whole blind box wall is online, the Fox & Bunny boxes are in the Halloween gift guide, and almost all of it lands in the $20 to $30 band if you want to try one of each and settle the argument yourself.