From Beanie Babies to Labubu: Manufactured Scarcity that Skyrockets Brands

One number you can take to the next board meeting: Pop Mart's Labubu-led "The Monsters" line grew roughly 726% in 2024 to become its biggest franchise, helping total revenue more than double to about $1.8 billion. Sources: Pop Mart 2024 annual results as reported by Time, CKGSB, and DemandSage.

In 2024, the Chinese toy company Pop Mart posted revenue of 13.04 billion RMB, roughly $1.8 billion, a 106.9% jump over the prior year, with adjusted net profit rising 185.9%, according to the company's audited results as reported by StockTitan, Time, and Visual Capitalist. The engine behind the surge was an elf named Labubu, sold almost entirely in blind boxes that hide which figure waits inside until the buyer tears open the seal.

The Labubu line, part of Pop Mart's The Monsters series, generated roughly 3 billion RMB in 2024, a 726% increase reported by Time and echoed across coverage from Visual Capitalist and Retail Merchandiser, and the company has guided toward roughly $4 billion in total revenue for 2025, per reporting from Reuters via Yahoo Finance and Retail Merchandiser. A palm-sized vinyl figure became a global phenomenon on the strength of a simple design choice: the buyer rarely knows exactly what is in the box, and the rarest editions appear in only a small fraction of them.

The mechanism is decades old. Long before Labubu, a former actor named Ty Warner built a billion-dollar empire on the same principle with a bin of under-stuffed plush animals. For a CMO weighing how to manufacture demand rather than chase it, the through line from Beanie Babies to Labubu is a masterclass in how scarcity converts a product into an event.

Scarcity is read as a signal of value

The pull is rooted in well-documented psychology. In a classic 1975 experiment published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Stephen Worchel, Jerry Lee, and Akanbi Adewole gave participants cookies from either an abundant jar or a nearly empty one, and the cookies in short supply were rated as more desirable and more valuable, a finding archived by Semantic Scholar, ResearchGate, and summarized in the social-psychology literature on scarcity. Limited availability tells the brain that others want the item, and perceived value rises to match.

The effect holds up at scale. A 2022 meta-analysis of product scarcity in the Journal of Retailing, alongside a 2023 meta-analysis in Psychology & Marketing and the summary published by Monash University, found that scarcity cues reliably lift purchase intention, and that limited-quantity messaging tends to move buyers more powerfully than limited-time messaging. Telling customers that only a set number exist reframes a purchase as a chance worth taking now.

The marketing lesson: Scarcity is a value signal the audience reads instantly. A finite quantity raises perceived worth and turns a routine purchase into a decision customers want to make before the window closes.

Beanie Babies wrote the modern playbook

Ty Inc. engineered demand with two disciplined moves. Starting in 1995, the company "retired" individual characters on an unpredictable schedule, and it distributed only through small specialty shops with strict per-customer purchase limits rather than big-box chains, according to The Hustle, Celebrity Net Worth, and Rare Historical Photos. Each retirement turned a $5 toy into a collectible, and the constant churn of new and vanishing characters kept collectors returning to complete sets.

The results were staggering. Ty Inc. surpassed $1 billion in annual revenue by 1999, retired characters resold for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars at the peak, and a 1997 McDonald's promotion moved 100 million miniature "Teenie Beanies" in ten days, per the same reporting. The lasting insight is that Ty paired scarcity with genuine collectibility, giving buyers a reason to chase the next release.

The marketing lesson: Controlled distribution and a steady cadence of limited releases build brand awareness and repeat demand at once. Scarcity plus a collectible worth completing keeps customers coming back on their own initiative.

Labubu turned the playbook into a global engine

Pop Mart modernized the model for a social era. The blind box preserves the thrill of the reveal, secret editions reward the most dedicated hunters, and a global network of stores, numbering over 530 stores and 2,490 roboshops (automated smart retail free-standing cubes), as of December 2024 per Time, keeps supply tight and demand visible. Timed drops and rotating series give the audience a reason to check back, and the unboxing moment became native content for millions of short-form videos.

That combination produced the numbers above and a fast-growing membership base that drives customer lifetime value through repeat collecting. Where Beanie Babies relied on word of mouth, Labubu turned every reveal into shareable proof of the hunt, generating earned media at a velocity paid campaigns struggle to match.

The marketing lesson: Scarcity becomes a growth engine when the reveal is worth sharing. A drop that people want to film turns the customer into the distribution channel and compounds brand awareness with every post.

The scarcity that lasts is paired with real desire

The durable version of this strategy rests on genuine brand love. Labubu, Supreme's weekly drops, and Nike's SNKRS launches all pair tight supply with a product an audience already covets, so the scarcity amplifies desire that is real rather than standing in for it. The hunt builds community, the community produces stories, and the stories deliver earned media and brand differentiation that competitors find difficult to replicate.

Handled with care, controlled availability also protects margin. Selling a curated quantity at full price supports a healthier average order value and keeps a brand in command of its own story, which is the foundation of long-term brand equity.

The marketing lesson: Scarcity multiplies desire that already exists. Anchoring a limited release to a product customers truly want turns restraint into pricing power and lasting brand differentiation.

The Broader Takeaway

For a CMO, manufactured scarcity connects to the metrics that define a healthy brand. Tight supply lifts perceived value and average order value, timed drops concentrate demand and sharpen brand awareness, the collector's return strengthens customer retention and customer lifetime value, and the shareable hunt generates earned media across the customer journey. The line from a $5 plush animal to a $1.8 billion designer-toy business is a single idea executed with discipline.

The thinking travels well beyond toys. Sneakers, streetwear, limited-run beauty, ticketed experiences, and collectible drops of every kind run on the same engine, and any brand with a product people love can use measured scarcity to turn steady interest into concentrated demand, provided it measures the lift with the same rigor it applies to every other channel.

Partner With RSL News Inc.

At RSL News Inc., we help brands design brand strategy and customer experience programs that turn scarcity into sustainable demand, pairing every limited release with a measurement framework that proves the return. If you want to build a launch your audience races to be part of, let's talk.

Related reading

• How to Launch: Your Go-To Checklist for New Product Hype
• Drop the Mic: Launch Your Marketing Like It's a Hot New Album
• Merch Madness: Turning Branded Products into Walking Billboards

References

1. StockTitan, "POP MART Releases 2024 Financials: Revenue Surpasses 13 Billion RMB, Net Profit Reaches New Peak." https://stocktitan.net/news/PMRTY/pop-mart-releases-2024-financials-revenue-surpasses-13-billion-rmb-6qqqocsnvwrp.html
2. Time, "Inside Pop Mart's Global Toy Takeover." https://time.com/7271656/popmart-china-blindbox-labubu-designer-toys-genz-luxury-industry-revenue/
3. Visual Capitalist, "Visualized: Pop Mart's Labubu Revenue Surge." https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualized-pop-parts-labubu-revenue-surge/
4. Retail Merchandiser, "Pop Mart Sales Surpass Over $4 Billion as Labubu Craze Redefines Toy Retail." https://retail-merchandiser.com/news/pop-mart-sales-surpass-over-4-billion-as-labubu-craze-redefines-toy-retail/
5. Reuters via Yahoo Finance, "Labubu Maker Pop Mart Predicts $4 Billion in 2025 Revenue." https://finance.yahoo.com/news/labubu-maker-pop-mart-predicts-141839706.html
6. Global Times, "Chinese Toy Company Pop Mart's H1 Net Profit Exceeds Full-Year Profit of Last Year." https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202507/1338445.shtml
7. The Hustle, "The Great Beanie Baby Bubble of '99." https://thehustle.co/the-great-beanie-baby-bubble-of-99
8. Celebrity Net Worth, "How Ty Warner Turned Beanie Babies Into a Multi-Billion Dollar Toy and Luxury Hotel Empire." https://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/failed-actor-2-6-billion-tycoon-ty-warner-became-man-behind-must-toy-90s/
9. Rare Historical Photos, "Remembering Beanie Babies: How These Tiny Stuffed Animals Became a Global Craze." https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/beanie-babies-history/
10. Worchel, Lee & Adewole, "Effects of Supply and Demand on Ratings of Object Value," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1975), via Semantic Scholar. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Effects-of-Supply-and-Demand-on-Ratings-of-Object-Worchel-Lee/e80a3b8c8b27fa69cc6f4fb4c4e497f705f07a89
11. Wikipedia, "Scarcity (social psychology)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity_(social_psychology)
12. ResearchGate, "Effects of Supply and Demand on Ratings of Object Value." https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232477790_Effects_of_supply_and_demand_on_ratings_of_object_value
13. Journal of Retailing, "Scarcity Tactics in Marketing: A Meta-Analysis of Product Scarcity Effects on Consumer Purchase Intentions" (2022). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435922000434
14. Ladeira et al., "A Meta-Analysis on the Effects of Product Scarcity," Psychology & Marketing (2023). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/mar.21816
15. Monash University, "Scarcity Tactics in Marketing: A Meta-Analysis of Product Scarcity Effects on Consumer Purchase Intentions." https://research.monash.edu/en/publications/scarcity-tactics-in-marketing-a-meta-analysis-of-product-scarcity/

AI assisted in creating the content featured in this post and image.