Labubus got extra kick from being gambling also. Many were sold in boxes without labels or with minimal labels that listed possible contents. That makes the actual product into more of a loot box kind of thing. That might have contributed to the speed of the trend passing.

I think I heard it was a bit more than that - you'd buy them online direct, blind, and be informed immediately after purchase what it was you'd actually bought, so bringing in the immediacy and "convenience" of online gambling/gacha/etc. too, compared to ordering a mystery box and opening it when it was delivered, or buying foil packs of trading cards where you need to actually be present at a particular location.

I recently learned that many collectables are sold this way!

Labubus just happened to get a wide appeal and had a moment in the US for some reason..

"Gatcha", from Japanese "gatchapon"; there's little dispenser machines which sell plastic eggs containing a random collectible from a set. There are thousands of different product lines.

Basically game lootboxes, but IRL. People like gambling, it seems.

are they regulated under gambling laws? Sounds like fraud to me.

They are and I hate it. It‘s bad enough with trading cards, but now every single collectible is employing gacha mechanics and it’s frustrating.

I don't get it. It's a "collectable". Your "hobby" is "collecting". You put your "collection" on a shelf and look at it.

That's not a hobby to me. It's just consuming for consumption's sake.

Well, they took that formula and made it worse because now you can't just buy it, you have to roll a dice or get a second hand.

Also nothing wrong with just having a shelf with things you like to look at.

> Also nothing wrong with just having a shelf with things you like to look at.

Sure. That's a collection of things you like but it's not "collecting". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4onp1zbjSjU

For eg Magic cards, a secondary market formed very quickly where you could buy exactly what you wanted.

"Everything is gambling now"

Protip: If you call it an investment, it becomes not only respectable but it is in fact the responsible thing to do for your customer's financial security.

Pogs, Tazos, Pokémon cards (all cards actually), Happy Meals, Knuckleheads/Gogos were/are still all sold lootbox style.

I think a Labubu novelty was lots of direct sales and a deliberately(?) flaky website that had people frantically strategising for secret methods to get an order placed successfully. When you did, they told you what you got without having to wait for it to arrive for an instant dopamine payout.

I suspect if the website worked very predicably and you could easily and calmly reserve what you wanted, even with the gacha mechanism, it would not have been such a frenzy.

So were pogs

beanie babies were rational, there was a supply constriction that seemed permanent, the founder resolved it and flooded the market, leaving bagholders and decades of mockery

but I would content it was not an example of irrational exuberance

labubu’s are part of a flooded market as well, but there was never anything to suggest it wouldnt be flooded only an expectation for demand to keep up longer than just half of this year

Beanie Babies were irrational because it is irrational to go into a collector craze over stuffed animals

unless more people want them than exist

No, because wanting them is an artificially engineered, irrational thing based on their hype not their value

the entire art and collectibles markets has functioned the same way for half a millennium, there is nothing to support utility based value