From Popland to Sony Pictures: Is Pop Mart becoming China’s Disney?

Over the past year, Pop Mart has crossed a threshold few Chinese consumer brands ever reach: popular culture ascendancy. Armed with a gang of artistic, joyous characters, the Beijing-based toy company is on its way to becoming China’s answer to the Disney franchise. A cultural phenomenon that brought Pop Mart into global consciousness, the fuzzy eared gremlin Labubu became the sought-after bag charm accessory in 2025, and a protagonist of worldwide internet culture. And January 2026 has already seen new Pop Mart manufacturing facilities open in Mexico, Cambodia and Indonesia to cater to rising global demand. The same month, its Heytea collaboration based on the Twinkle Twinkle IP went viral. This follows a foray into Hollywood. Sony Pictures is developing a live-action Labubu film with Paul King — the director behind Paddington and Wonka. The move embodies Pop Mart’s ambition to evolve from a blind-box powerhouse into a global IP machine. Take Popland, the company’s immersive 40,000-sqm IP theme park in Beijing’s Chaoyang Park, which opened in 2023. In the first half of 2025 alone, Pop Mart reported revenue of 13.88 billion RMB ($1.98 billion), up 204% year-on-year. New kid on the block Twinkle Twinkle (“a group of little stars, who together tell stories about courage, longing, and love”) is emerging as the company’s next hit. Popular bubble tea chain Heytea has proven the IP’s acclaim through a brand collaboration launched in December, 2025. On Xiaohongshu, the hashtag #heyteastarmancollab has racked up 13.5 million views, while #heystarryperson has surpassed 28.2 million. Users document jam-packed stores, themed receipts, limited merchandise and restocking frenzies. In December, videos circulated of customers aggressively grabbing Twinkle Twinkle blind boxes as staff replenished shelves. If Labubu was 2025’s defining character, Twinkle Twinkle is shaping up to be a contender for 2026. The Labubu bubble Labubu’s popularity is showing some signs of strain. In recent weeks, Pop Mart shares slid sharply after reports that reseller demand for collectibles was cooling. Some secondary-market prices have fallen below official retail levels, a red flag for investors accustomed to hype-driven growth. The decline extends a broader downward trend. The concern is a familiar one — that as a breakout character loses momentum, the next it-character may not arrive quickly enough to sustain growth. Tokyo-based journalist Ashley Clarke says that Labubus and kawaii characters are “a license to be a kid again. The world feels increasingly miserable and bleak, so it’s plausible that we want to find ways to return to a time when we didn’t have to worry about the big stuff." A Disney-like clan of characters This ability to inject joy into consumer lives through a cycle of characters is central to Pop Mart’s model, yet also illustrates a business model akin to the soul of Walt Disney. The American multi-mass media company’s original purpose was storytelling and entertainment, with consumer products following later. Pop Mart inverts that logic. It is, at its core, a consumerism-first business, engineered around buying, collecting, trading and displaying. The format dates back to the early 2010s, but it was not until 2016, with the launch of Molly, that the blind-box concept truly took off. By combining surprise mechanics with designer-led aesthetics, Pop Mart tapped into young consumers’ overlapping interests in gaming, photogenic interiors and collector culture. As YouTuber Romina Rose May (58,200 subscribers) tells Jing Daily about her extensive Labubu collection, “I've been a collector my entire life and couldn't resist these little gremlins that suspiciously look like they're up to something. Bag charms have always been a fabulous way of bringing more individuality (and magic) into our daily lives. Dressing up my bags and matching them with my outfits is an entire (fun) hobby in itself.” Beyond driving a bag charm boom, what sets Pop Mart apart is how every character is also represented by the artists behind them. Each character comes with a named creator, giving the IP a human face — a powerful currency for Gen Z audiences wary of faceless corporations. Characters like Crybaby, another strong performer, and Labubu’s fashion-forward collaborations with brands such as Moynat, Porsche and Chinese designer label Pronounce, reinforce Pop Mart’s positioning at the intersection of art, fashion and pop culture. The company is also laying industrial groundwork for its global push, expanding its supply chain and overseas footprint as it looks beyond China for growth. Most recently, Pop Mart announced that it has expanded its production footprint. Similar to Disney, Pop Mart is constructing a rotating cast. Mickey Mouse may be the protagonist, akin to Labubu, yet the character is part of an ensemble, alongside the likes of Donald Duck, Goofy, and many others. Pop Mart’s portfolio is starting to look similar in spirit, if not yet in scale. Whether Pop Mart can cement itself in global pop consciousness remains an open question. Hype cycles are transitory, and consumer fatigue is real. But if Disney showed that characters can outlive generations, Pop Mart is betting that, in today’s market, a steady stream of emotionally resonant, artist-driven IPs might be just as powerful.

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From Popland to Sony Pictures: Is Pop Mart becoming China’s Disney?