The Roll Up: August 5, 2025 

TL;DR: A $10 keychain sparked a global craze. But here’s the twist: it wasn’t just a marketing stunt. Using Rolli IQ™, we analyzed millions of social media posts. The verdict? The Labubu phenomenon is real, organic, and still growing. Here's how we know:

In April 2024, Lisa from BLACKPINK was spotted with a Labubu keychain on her handbag.

COURTESY OF BLACKPINK'S LISA/INSTAGRAM @LALALALISA_M

It Spread from Thailand... Fast!

Using Rolli IQ's global engagement map, we saw something fascinating: Labubu didn’t just catch fire in K-pop fan circles, it ignited first in Thailand, and from there spread rapidly to Indonesia, the U.S., Mexico, Canada, and beyond.

And the numbers told a story we’d soon see playing out in streets and stores around the world: a small keychain fueling massive, real-world reactions.

Rolli IQ Emotion Mapping (clustered by country)

From Celebrity Sighting to Global Frenzy

After Lisa’s post, the collectible’s popularity surged almost overnight. Within weeks, Pop Mart stores in Bangkok and Jakarta reported sell-outs, with customers queueing for hours before opening. By mid-2024, resellers on Shopee and eBay were listing rare variants for more than 20 times their retail price, and unlicensed “Lafufu” knock-offs began flooding Chinese and Southeast Asian markets. In early 2025, the craze reached new extremes: a 4-foot mint-green Labubu sold at a Sotheby’s auction for nearly US $170,000, and crowds in Hong Kong and Seoul shut down shopping districts during limited-edition drops. The frenzy wasn’t without backlash: UK customs seized hundreds of counterfeit dolls over safety concerns, and pop-up releases in Moscow and Baghdad sparked fights and police interventions. By 2025, Pop Mart’s Labubu line had exploded to $418 million in global sales, growing at a staggering 726% year-over-year.

Rolli IQ Media Monitoring (with source clustering)

The Craze? It’s Still Accelerating

Using Rolli IQ’s narrative velocity tracker, we looked at engagement trends across platforms over time, and what we saw was a sharp, sustained rise in mentions beginning in early July, with no signs of slowing down.

Rolli IQ Cross-Platform Analysis

But Was It Real... or Coordinated Marketing? --It's Organic

When we see a spike like this, the first instinct is: This has to be orchestrated. Bots? Hype loops? Influencer seeding? So we dug into the data using Rolli IQ's proprietary tools designed to cut through noise and surface authentic behavior. What we found surprised us. Analyzing Labubu mentions across social from March to August 2025, only 11% of amplification on X came from the top 10% of users. That’s well within normal range, not what you’d expect from a manipulated campaign.

Same story on YouTube, where average posts per user held steady. Even Reddit, which showed slightly higher concentration, reflected an enthusiastic, loyal fan base, not astroturfing.

The algorithm flagged low signs of coordinated inauthentic behavior.

In plain English: people just love Labubu.

But Not Everyone Is a Fan…

With virality comes backlash. Rolli IQ also surfaced hidden narratives around Labubu. Some users praised the dolls as adorable. Others called them “ugly”… and a few even claimed they were possessed. Yes, really.