Blind boxes and collectibles (manghe): building scarcity and fandom the Pop Mart way
Short version: the blind box (manghe) is not a gimmick you bolt onto a product — it's a demand engine that only runs when the character is good enough to love without opening the box. Pop Mart proved it can build a business that did RMB 13 billion in 2024, more than double the prior year, on little figures people buy not knowing which one they'll get. Foreign brands can borrow the mechanic. What most of them can't borrow is the thing that makes it work — a character consumers want before the scarcity ever kicks in.
Every few months a Western brand asks me some version of "can we do a blind box?" The honest answer is yes, almost anyone can print a mystery box. The useful answer is that you're asking about the least important part. The box is theatre. The character, the rarity math, and the fandom underneath it are the product. Get the order wrong and you've made landfill with a question mark on the lid.
What manghe actually is, and why it got this big
A blind box is a sealed, opaque package containing one figure from a set — you know the series, not the unit. A standard series usually runs a dozen designs plus a rare "secret" or hidden chase figure, commonly cited at odds around 1 in 144. Boxes sell for the price of a sandwich, roughly USD 9–15 each, which is the whole trick: the ticket is cheap, the outcome is uncertain, and completing the set or hunting the chase pulls you back. China's trendy-toy market — blind boxes at its core — was estimated by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences at around RMB 47.8 billion for 2023.
The mistake is reading that as a toy story. It's a fandom story. Pop Mart's growth didn't come from the box format; it came from owning characters people formed an attachment to — the Monsters IP, Labubu among them, generated roughly RMB 3 billion in 2024, up more than sevenfold year on year, and about a third of the company's revenue in the first half of 2025. The box monetizes the attachment. It does not create it.
The four things the Pop Mart model is actually doing
Strip away the hype and the engine has four parts, each doing a specific job. Miss any one and the whole thing stalls:
| Mechanic | What it does | Where foreign brands get it wrong |
|---|---|---|
| A character worth loving | Gives people a reason to buy before the mystery or rarity matters | They lead with the logo and treat the character as decoration — nobody chases a mascot with no feeling behind it |
| Designed variance | A set plus a rare chase turns one purchase into a collection habit | They randomize junk — variety without desirability is just a worse version of the thing |
| Legible scarcity | Limited runs and secret editions create status and resale energy | They fake scarcity on something nobody wanted, which reads as cynical, not exclusive |
| A place for the fandom to live | Communities on Xiaohongshu and Douyin trade, display, and recruit new buyers for free | They run it as a one-off drop with no home for the people who collected it |
Scarcity only works downstream of desire
This is the line I keep repeating because brands keep crossing it. Scarcity amplifies demand; it cannot manufacture it. A chase figure at 1-in-144 odds is thrilling when the base character is already beloved and embarrassing when it isn't — you're just gating access to something people were lukewarm on. The sequence is character first, then variance, then scarcity, and only then the box. Reverse it and you get the sad shelf of unsold "limited editions" every category eventually produces.
The healthy signal that you've earned the right to a blind box: there's already a secondary market forming around your product or a resale conversation happening without you. That's the same pull that keeps collectibles trading on platforms built for it — see what the Dewu (Poizon) resale economy does for sneakers and designer toys. If nobody's reselling you, a mystery box won't start it.
The rules you have to design around
This is where foreign brands get caught flat-footed, because the regulatory ground has moved. In June 2023 China's market regulator (SAMR) issued interim guidelines on blind-box business practices. The parts that matter for your plan: you must disclose the draw odds and the rarity of the chase clearly and up front; you're pushed toward spending caps and purchase limits; there's a negative list of what can't go in a box; and there are real protections for minors — no direct sale to children under 8, and parental consent expected for 8-to-18s. Shanghai moved earlier with its own price caps and under-8 restrictions.
None of this kills the model. It kills the lazy version of it — undisclosed odds, manufactured desperation, marketing to kids. Treat transparent odds as a feature, not a constraint. The brands that post the probabilities plainly look confident; the ones that hide them look like they're running a slot machine, and Chinese consumers have gotten very good at spotting that.
How a foreign brand should actually use this
For most brands, the answer isn't "launch your own IP tomorrow." It's one of three moves, in rising order of commitment:
- Collaborate before you create. Partner with an existing, loved character or artist for a limited collectible. You rent the fandom instead of spending years building one, and you learn whether your category even supports the behavior.
- Make the collectible a reward, not the product. A well-designed figure or set that comes with purchase — tied to your actual product — drives repeat buying without betting the brand on becoming a toy company.
- Build an owned character only if you'll commit to it. IP is a multi-year investment with a story, a world, and regular drops. Done half-heartedly it's worse than not doing it. This is closer to the discipline behind serious limited-edition drop strategy than to a one-off promo.
Whichever move you pick, give the collectors a home. The fandom is the asset — the Xiaohongshu posts where people show their shelves, the trades, the "I finally pulled the secret" videos. That earned behavior is what a blind box buys you that a discount never will, and it's worth more than the margin on any single box.
Bottom line
The manghe model looks like a packaging trick and is actually a fandom business wearing a packaging trick. The box monetizes love, variance deepens the habit, scarcity adds status, and a community keeps it all alive — in that order, never reversed. Foreign brands that start with a character people genuinely want, disclose their odds like adults, and give collectors somewhere to gather can borrow a real engine. The ones that print a mystery box around a product nobody was chasing have just added a question mark to their unsold inventory.
If you're weighing whether collectibles or a China IP play fit your brand — or whether you've actually earned the demand to pull it off — that's the kind of call I help brands make. Reach out.