Urgent warning issued as dangerous fake Labubu dolls flood UK market
Legitimate Labubu toys, created by Hong Kong artist Kasing Lung and sold by Chinese toymaker Pop Mart, have become a viral and profitable sensation around the world. The palm-sized plushie, which has a bunny body, elf-like face and sharp teeth, is so popular that genuine versions are becoming increasingly difficult to come by.
In May, Pop Mart announced that it was temporarily suspending all in-store sales of the collectible across the UK following chaotic scenes of crowd surges and reported fights. Last week, thieves in the Los Angeles area broke into a store and made off with thousands of dollars worth of stock.
The toy's massive popularity has led to a wave of fakes, and many have been deemed unsafe, according to Britain's Chartered Trading Standards Institute.
In a warning it described as 'urgent' on its website, the CTSI reported that thousands of dangerous counterfeits have been seized by their teams across the country, often as a result of complaints from parents.
'Counterfeit Labubu dolls are poorly made and unsafe,' the news release warned. 'Many contain small, detachable parts such as eyes, hands, and feet, which present a serious choking hazard to young children. Loose stitching and exposed stuffing further increase the risk of suffocation.' It added: 'Without proper safety checks, they may also contain toxic substances such as lead, harmful dyes, or banned plasticisers.'
Last month, CNN reported on the massive production of fake Labubus in China, with the cheap copycats dubbed 'Lafufus.' Chinese customs officials are said to have seized many thousands of these that were intended for export since June alone.
Consumers can tell if a doll is genuine by certain markers, including a holographic Pop Mart sticker, a scannable QR code linking to the company's website and a UV stamp on one of the feet. These are 'commonly missing or poorly replicated' on fakes, the CTSI said.
Another tell-tale sign can be the number of teeth. Genuine dolls have nine, while fakes may vary. Overly vibrant colors and poor stitching can also indicate the doll is not the real deal.
Kerry Nicol, external affairs manager at CTSI, said in the release that the demand has been 'amplified' by social media. 'Supply and demand means that legitimate Labubu dolls are almost impossible to find,' she said.
'These fake products bypass the rigorous safety checks and compliance requirements the law demands, meaning they could contain choking hazards, toxic materials, or faulty components that put children at serious risk. Everyone involved in the supply chain – from manufacturers and fulfilment houses to sellers and marketplaces should have a role to play in ensuring unsafe toys never reach the hands of children.'
Pop Mart have been contacted for comment.
Olivia Kemp contributed to this report.
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Even better that she was a product of, and a critic of, California, a place by then becoming accepted — sometimes begrudgingly — by those same editors as a cultural nexus and bellwether. Luckily for the other writers immersed in the Manson world (some of whom were buying dead bolts for their doors), Didion's book with Kasabian did not ultimately come to fruition. As I've researched my own book in progress about coverage of the Manson saga, I've been flummoxed by the reasons behind Didion's apparent abandonment of the book, which had commanded a substantial monetary advance and received its own wave of media attention. What journalist would give up that sort of coveted exclusive? When others questioned Didion throughout the 1970s about the project's fate, she often gave vague responses. Members of the Manson Family were reportedly smug that she had walked away, convinced that their intimidation efforts against other journalists may have done the trick with her, too. 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'Linda had gone from Howdy's to the Spahn Ranch to Cielo Drive and now she was back at Howdy's, and none of it seemed to make much difference,' Didion wrote in her notes. 'It seemed to me sometimes that she had been in clinical shock all her life, and only the slightest accident or rupture of circumstances had taken her to Cielo Drive at all, this somnambulist from the depressed underside of New England.' Kasabian and her family also joined Didion in New York City around that time. Didion recounted in 'The White Album' an excursion with this onetime Manson disciple to see the Statue of Liberty, her young children again in tow; Didion brought along her own young daughter, Quintana Roo. In her unpublished notes, Didion wrote that the kids — oblivious to the horrific events that had brought Kasabian and Didion together in the first place — sang 'Jumping Jack Flash' and played together on the Staten Island Ferry. On a visit to Henri Bendel, an upscale Fifth Avenue department store, Kasabian overheard on the music speakers 'Piggies' by the Beatles, a song from which Manson had drawn sinister inspiration. She ran to the bathroom to throw up. Didion decided, in mid-1971, about a year after the Manson trial began, not to write the Kasabian book — at least not as it was originally conceived. Kasabian became a recluse; while she had been released from her legal obligation of exclusivity for the Didion project, she never spoke at such length with any other reporter. (She died in 2023, at 73.) Meanwhile, Didion stashed away her material for nearly a decade: 'The White Album,' with its brief mentions of Kasabian and the Manson saga — about 1,000 words extracted from Didion's reams of reporting — was savvily released just weeks before the 10th anniversary of the murders. During the investigations and trial, some journalists practically sold their souls for comparatively insignificant Manson scoops, which they scrambled to publish as quickly as possible. More reporters had since vied for access to the reclusive Kasabian, with no success. Yet Didion had unapologetically taken what she wanted from their interactions, coolly strategized how to best use it to her literary advantage. By the time 'The White Album' was released, other writers had published big, noisy Manson books: Sanders's lurid account, 'The Family,' came out in 1971. Prosecutor Bugliosi released 'Helter Skelter' in 1974; it became the best-selling true crime book in history. But in the afterword to the 20th-anniversary edition of the book, Bugliosi quoted Didion's famous words in 'The White Album' to illustrate how the terrifying murders had defined the era: 'Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969 … and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.' While Bugliosi's book remains a widely read albeit controversial true-crime classic, Didion ultimately claimed a different sort of literary prize, burnishing that clairvoyant reputation with her narrower investigation. Other writers had devoted years and thousands of pages to deciphering the Manson morass, yet she was able to use her findings to define one of the most tumultuous decades in American history in a single, bare-bones essay, years after the fact. Didion did privately acknowledge that the definitive 'why' behind the ordeal remained elusive to her, even after the many hours she spent with one of the saga's protagonists. 'Everything that came to my attention about situations with Linda came down to the same thing: the paradox, the ordinariness of the situation and the extraordinariness of the fact, the mystery (in the theological sense) of the night on Cielo Drive,' she mused in her unpublished notes. 'I could not penetrate that mystery, or avoid it or evade it or get beyond it.' Lesley M. M. Blume is a Los Angeles-based journalist and historian. She is the author, most recently, of 'Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-Up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World.' She is currently finishing her book on the Manson saga, 'A Devil's Bargain.'
