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Boston Globe
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Meet the Labubu, the ugly-cute doll that's all the rage
Write to us at . To subscribe, . TODAY'S STARTING POINT A fluffy body, monstrous grin, pointy ears, a perfect keychain size, and a global craze — meet the Labubu. The mischievous-looking plush dolls have gasps of delight. backpacks and purses across Boston. The quirky dolls are sold by the Chinese toy giant Pop Mart, and have sent fans, young and old, scrambling to Advertisement Here's what you need to know about the ugly-cute dolls. What is a Labubu? Labubus come in over 300 sizes and styles, from key rings to pendants to 3-foot 'Super Labubus.' The dolls were designed in 2015 by Advertisement Lung collaborated with But the toys really took off last April when LISA, a member of the band BLACKPINK, a Korean girl group, The craze exploded and has not slowed since. There are different Labubu series under 'The Monsters' brand, according to a online Fans can buy the toys in box sets that come with six or 12 toys in 'blind boxes.' Serious collectors look for 'secret' Labubus, the rarest editions of the dolls, such as the For those who aren't willing to shell out big money, there are knock-off versions called Lafufus. Why are the dolls popular? Mary ET Boyle, a senior continuing lecturer at the University of California, San Diego, said the Labubu trend hits the cognitive 'trifecta.' First, social media and our identities have become heavily intertwined, said Boyle, a neuroscientist. 'So then if everybody on social media has this doll' we're going to want one, too, she said. People also don't want to 'miss out,' Boyle said. So when Labubus are hard to find, primal instinct makes us want to acquire them. Finally, the idea of opening a 'blind box' and finding a rare Labubu is akin to 'gambling,' Boyle said. Advertisement 'That random part makes your brain go crazy,' she said. 'It's the dopamine moment.' Are these the new ... Beanie Babies? Labubus may recall the Beanie Baby craze of the mid-90s. Back then, the $5 stuffed animals became so sought after that some eventually sold for thousands of dollars. Zac Bissonnette, the author of 'The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute' described the Beanie Baby as the 'first indicator that the internet could drive people mad.' 'What happened with [Beanie Babies] then was a harbinger of many things to come,' he said. 'Both good and bad.' What's happening in Boston? In Boston, the Labubu market is tough. Stores like Newbury Comics that carry Pop Mart brands have been sold out for months. Muniz, who runs a young adult lifestyle account on TikTok, loved the 'blind boxes' and having a 'cute' Labubu charm on her bag. As she walked down Newbury Street after buying them, Muniz said she noticed people pointing and whispering: 'Oh my God, she has a Labubu.' Outside Newbury Comics on a Wednesday in early July, Terri Morgan, 55, who was visiting Boston from Los Angeles, flaunted two Labubu key chains on her purse. Terri Morgan shows off the Labubu doll on her purse. The dolls have taken over social media and are the latest toy craze. Joanna Malvas 'They were hard to get,' said Morgan, who owns 15 Labubus. It's all about 'the thrill of trying to find something that you can't get,' she said. At the height of her obsession, Morgan was buying custom Labubus, large-size versions, and even clothes for the dolls. Advertisement Eventually, it got to be too much, she said. Raine Montgomery, 30, the store manager at Newbury Comics at Faneuil Hall, said they started selling Pop Mart items in large quantity around the start of 2025. But after March, Pop Mart no longer supplied them, Montgomery said. But they still get as many as 10 to 15 requests a day for Labubus. 'As soon as I hear 'La-,' I'm like, 'Oh, nope,'' Montgomery said. A spokesperson for Pop Mart Americas said the 'Monsters Vinyl Face blind boxes are only available for sale directly from official POP MART sales channels at this time.' Sunday Market in Allston was the rare local store where Labubus were plentiful. The owner, Kun Chen, 29, buys them from resellers in Asia. Based on their prices, Chen says he may have to sell the Labubus for almost $70. Since he started selling Labubus in late April, sales have increased 80 percent. 'They are so hard to find,' said Muniz, the TikToker, 'That just makes you want it more.' 🧩 7 Across: 78° POINTS OF INTEREST Summer school at Boland Elementary School, where Massachusetts Migrant Education Program programming would be taking place if the Trump administration hadn't frozen its funding. Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Haverhill police death: The Essex County district attorney's office Politics and business: As Josh Kraft runs against Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, her administration is pushing his family's company to Advertisement Healey vs. Campbell: Massachusetts' governor dismayed consumer advocates last year when she signed a bill that included legal protections for BlueHub Capital, a Boston nonprofit accused of predatory lending. Now the state's attorney general is proposing new rules A new way to lose: The Red Sox lost to the Phillies last night on a walkoff catcher's interference call in the 10th inning, First Amendment: The White House barred a Wall Street Journal reporter from covering Trump's upcoming trip to Scotland over the paper's recent story about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. ( RFK Jr.: Researchers are cautiously optimistic about the Trump administration's $50 million initiative to explore autism's origins, wary of interference by Trump's vaccine-skeptical health secretary but hopeful that the funding School's out: The Trump administration froze funding to an education program for the Los Angeles: The Pentagon is withdrawing 700 Marines it sent to the city last month amid anti-ICE protests. ( Etan Patz case: Pedro Hernandez, a New York City store clerk convicted of kidnapping and killing the 6-year-old Patz in 1979, should get a new trial, a court ruled, finding that a judge violated Hernandez's rights. ( Breonna Taylor: A judge sentenced a former Louisville police officer convicted in her 2020 killing to 33 months in prison, rejecting the Trump administration's request that he receive just one day. ( Advertisement BESIDE THE POINT 🍽️ On assignment: Here's what Adam Himmelsbach, the Globe's traveling NBA beat writer, ate ☀️ SPF: Animals in nature have ways of avoiding sunburns. For the rest, there's sunscreen. ( 🎥 Appointment viewing: Catch a Studio Ghibli classic, so-bad-it's-good sci-fi, and 📱 Brave new world: As many as 25 percent of job applications appear to be AI-generated, recruiters say. Here's how they can tell. ( 🍳 Oops: A viral study about the dangers of black-plastic cookware contained a math error that vastly overstated the risk. That still doesn't mean you were wrong to throw out your spatula. ( 😡 Morality tale: The Coldplay audience camera incident reveals a timeless truth — that writes. 🪦 RIP: Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who played Theo Huxtable on 'The Cosby Show,' died after he got caught in a current while swimming in Costa Rica. He was 54. ( Thanks for reading Starting Point. This newsletter was edited by ❓ Have a question for the team? Email us at ✍🏼 If someone sent you this newsletter, you can 📬 Delivered Monday through Friday. Ava Berger can be reached at
Boston Globe
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Aimee Mann says she ‘would never have become a musician' without Berklee
She said the school's 'Come and learn' approach and her teachers' encouragement were instrumental. 'I would never have become a musician otherwise,' she says. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The 'super fun' music scene in Boston in the early eighties was the next spark. 'It was incredibly vibrant and all the bands knew each other,' she says. 'I also worked at Newbury Comics so I heard every import, every interesting weird little new wave and punk band.' Her band, Young Snakes, was 'unlistenable and noisy,' she says with a laugh. 'It's the kind of thing you do when you're 20. But there were a hundred clubs in the area and we played six nights a week, so it gave me a lot of experience. It was the most fun part of my career.' Advertisement Mann, who's married to singer-songwriter Michael Penn, will be performing her 2002 album 'Lost in Space' on this tour (it has just been re-mastered for vinyl). How did the recent 'Til Tuesday reunion come about? We got an offer from this festival and I'm not sure why I did it. The guys really wanted to do it. I didn't really want to, I gotta say, but I like a challenge. I wondered if I could do these songs well and how would I approach them. It was more difficult than I thought it would be, because I don't sing like that anymore. Even changing the keys didn't help. My style has gotten more conversational. It became a technical thing, like how do I leap up to the octave. So on some songs, it felt like singing karaoke — and I don't ever sing karaoke. The show went really well, but music is like a time machine, and it's weird, 'cause you don't always come back. I felt really weird afterwards and I can't tell you why. I think it's because I'm not that person anymore. So it felt like I was subbing for the singer of this band, like there was some identity shifting where you feel like you're your own doppelganger. You're playing the 'Lost in Space' album on this tour, which was written during a healing period after a difficult point in your life. Will singing those songs feel cathartic or emotionally fraught, or are they just songs? I guess I'll find out. We're just starting to practice now. A lot of the songs are very depressing, but when you're on stage, the audience creates a different vibe, so it's a more cheerful party atmosphere. And I love my band so much that I feel like focusing on the music will make it fun and satisfying regardless of what the lyrics are. Advertisement You had traumas in your childhood [her parents fought over custody and she was taken by one all over Europe and then the other to England]. How much do your early experiences still linger in your songwriting? Stuff pops up as echoes. You find yourself writing about a current situation, but the reason it resonates is it reminds you of your annoying stepmother, and otherwise that situation wouldn't bother you. I think everything has echoes to the past. You also paint and make comics. What do you like about having other creative outlets? Again, I like challenges. Painting and cartooning are harder for me than writing songs. You want to feel like you really cracked it. There's fun in that, although I'm writing a graphic memoir and it is not that fun because I'm not that good at it. Maybe by the end of the book, I'll be better. I have some moments where I think, 'This panel is really good.' But if every panel is, 'Oh, this head looks like a pumpkin' and I've erased it a thousand times, then the fun is kind of limited. I wish it came more naturally, but, you know... Do you and your husband bounce ideas off each other when you're working on new songs? Michael is very solitary and much more private about his stuff. The joke about him is that he's a hermit. He has a studio where he basically sits in the dark writing songs for his first record in 20 years because he's been scoring movies and TV shows. Advertisement I encourage him to ask if he's having trouble with lyrics or something, because I can write a couple of lines that maybe will give him an idea. Only two times in the last nine months has he asked to play me something. Once he asked, 'Does this sound like something else?' And once he said the lyrics were just placeholders, but I said, 'These lyrics are fantastic. What is even wrong with you?' He's very self-critical. Do you play stuff for him? No, I don't. I think I assume he's not really that interested. Playing songs for another person is really tricky. The only person I'll send a song to for a pat on the back or a 'Does this work' is my friend, Jonathan Coulton. I'll say, I'm not sure exactly what the song is about, so tell me what it feels like so I can home in on the lyrics. How do you look back at the success you had with 'Til Tuesday and the record label struggles you had in your solo career? Do you have any regrets? My decisions — to make my own records on my own label since 'Bachelor No. 2″ — have been perfect for me. The majority of female singers out there have a certain look. It's showbiz and I'm not interested in showbiz. That takes a certain mindset and effort and frankly it's too much work in the realms of thinking about outfits and sets and product deals. Not for me. I also don't have a lot of patience with other people's commercial concerns. Advertisement At this point I don't even know how you have a hit — you get a million streams on Spotify and you make 30 cents. Like, wow, I should really aspire to that. 'Til Tuesday was really famous, like MTV famous. But it doesn't take that many people following you back to like your crappy apartment and waiting outside your window to make you think, fame makes everyone a stalker and yet I have to be nice to them. For fame, it really helps to have a bottomless need for attention and my need to be loved and paid attention to has a limit. If I make a record for myself that I really like, that's enough. This interview was edited for length and clarity. AIMEE MANN With Jonathan Coulton Friday, June 6, 8 p.m., The Wilbur, 246 Tremont St., Boston. Sold out, but tickets are available for resale.
