"Though the character known as Labubu has been around for a decade, the toy version-around six inches tall, sporting bunny ears and a demonic grin-is only just becoming a must-have accessory. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz join the trend and unbox their very own Labubu before diving into the history of such fads."
"They draw a distinction between collecting and speculating, from the seventeenth-century Dutch tulip mania through to the eBay-fuelled Beanie Baby craze of the nineteen-nineties and the far more recent rise and fall of non-fungible tokens. And they attempt to understand why this slightly unsettling children's toy is now inspiring such intense reactions. "People were flooding my D.M.s, like, 'This thing is the end of culture,'" Schwartz says. "This thing is not the end of culture. It's a point on a line.""
Labubu is a decade-old character whose toy incarnation—about six inches tall with bunny ears and a demonic grin—has recently become a must-have accessory. The surge in popularity prompted unboxing and exploration of fad histories. The narrative distinguishes collecting from speculating, tracing patterns from seventeenth-century Dutch tulip mania through the eBay-fuelled Beanie Baby craze of the 1990s to the rise and fall of non-fungible tokens. The toy's slightly unsettling appearance has generated intense online reactions and direct messages. Some frame the reaction as cultural alarm, while others see it as one point on a broader cultural continuum.
Read at The New Yorker
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