Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

On Labubu and the Hyperreal

2earth.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 102 posts

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#61

Post by cptroot »

freetime2 wrote: post #15
doctorpangloss wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha what would Pokémon have to do to convince you it's more than a fad? It's already the world's biggest IP, it's been around for 30 years...

I’m referring specifically to the cards, which exploded in popularity after Logan Paul paid $5 million for a rare card in 2021. The prices are completely driven by artificial scarcity - obviously they could easily print any card in unlimited numbers, but they intentionally print some cards in limited quantities that can only be obtained by getting lucky with a random pack. Most buyers don’t even play the card game. I…

I recently watched an excellent video about that incident. [1]

The takeaway was that this was yet another move by rich assholes designed to siphon money from the pockets of small time gamblers just so that the rich could get richer. They did it to Pokemon cards, destroying the experience of playing the actual game, and they tried to do it to Manga (although they hopefully won't succeed there).

[1] https://youtu.be/W2x-UQpiARc?si=eVwXhHAtD0keH2ON

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#62

Post by doctorpangloss »

freetime2 wrote: post #54
john_strinlai wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m referring specifically to the cards, which exploded in popularity after Logan Paul paid $5 million for a rare card in 2021. the cards have been popular for significantly longer than 5 years. my kid's entire class (the entire school, really) brought their binders of pokemon cards to school every day in ~2002 until the school banned pokemon cards on premise because they were such a distraction and causing issues…

They have long been popular, but the popularity has increased more than 5x since the pandemic. They were printing less than 2 billion a year before then [1], and are now selling more than 10 billion a year despite shortages, scalping, etc [2]. Perhaps "boom" is a better word for it than "fad". But my point is just that this demand seems to be largely driven by artifical scarcity, speculation, influencers - similar to…

Can you really say they're scarce if they're printing 5x as many, by your own words?

Look I agree with you, kids find YouTube videos about really compelling IP really compelling! But that is the story, with Pokémon cards and Labubu. Artificial scarcity, which a bajillion games try to do, most of them failing, doesn't alone move the needle on appeal. It's basically meaningless as a design choice. That's what you mean by artificial, the perception of scarcity, maybe, which everything collectible tries to do, and to me, is not really why kids find it appealing or care of whatever.

It's just the part of the product that you understand. That is what I am trying to say. You don't know why they find Pokémon appealing. You have no idea. You understand the gacha part but it doesn't really matter. It's easier to see this when you try playing really popular Roblox games, it really hits you how poorly you understand appeal.

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#63

Post by cm2012 »

nippoo wrote: post #30
pokememon wrote: post #22

Trading Card Games (TCG), and generally any item relying on gacha mechanics, are this generation's "scratchers". It's amazing seeing grown adults who would scoff at their peers buying lotto tickets and scratchers enthusiastically burn cash on TCG without the slightest sense of hypocrisy. The secret is "social head canon". "Head canon" is when you fill in the plot holes to make sense of your favorite narratives. "Soci…

Except scratch cards are a guaranteed statistical loss. Trading cards, if you're skilled and know what you're doing, can be a sensible side-income. It's the difference between poker and roulette...

Most people who try to make money in trading cards will lose money

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#64

Post by thaumasiotes »

miladyincontrol wrote: post #50
2agshf wrote: post #3

Labubus have one of the most sophisticated marketing on Twitch and YouTube, by the same people who are paid to promote anime and gaming "conferences". I agree that reality and fiction unfortunately merges for a subset of the population. The gaming addicted are also most likely to develop an AI addiction, because LLMs and agent setups are basically a computer game.

Huh, most anime cons have horrendous if any marketing. Beyond basic social feeds most of their reach these days are from inviting "influencers" to join in on panels, cosplay judging contests, etc. Which in turn pisses off a lot of the con's main audience as rarely are these influencers sufficiently knowledgable on the topics (ie little knowledge on costume making, barely aware of a given series, etc). Few if any west…

> The big thing labubus had beyond the gambling aspect was that its something you can put on your bag and actually bring around places, far more visibility than most other "viral" goods. It was an accessory.

I have one friend (Chinese living in China) who is a big fan of popmart products. But Labubu is a secondary thing for her. Her passion is Dimoo.

https://www.popmart.com/us/pop-now/set/471

Dimoo comes in figurines that you can display in your home. Or on your desk at work, I guess. You can buy third-party accessories for it; my friend has a hollow cupcake with the text GUPCAKE on the wrapper, for your figurine to look like it's bursting out of a cupcake. Or maybe like it lives in one.

Another Chinese friend of mine mentioned to me that Popmart figurines were trendy, and the blind boxes made them more fun to purchase. She objected strongly when I characterized this as 赌博 ("gambling").

All of the appeal of these products is the gambling aspect. Labubu isn't even distinctive except in its foreign news coverage.

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#65

Post by panarky »

untitled-now wrote: post #51

This trend never got me or my kids and i never understood the fuss around it , I mean they are not pretty , they are not playable , or maybe it is because I am just getting old ? Born in 1988 here , maybe I just don't get the new generation .

> not playable ...

My Uber driver, a man about 35 years old, pulled up in a Tesla Model Y with four Lububus superglued to the dash.

Seems like some kind of status thing, not a plaything.

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#66

Post by ryanmcbride »

untitled-now wrote: post #51

This trend never got me or my kids and i never understood the fuss around it , I mean they are not pretty , they are not playable , or maybe it is because I am just getting old ? Born in 1988 here , maybe I just don't get the new generation .

Hey same age as you here.

They fill the same slot as like, troll dolls.

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#67

Post by HoldOnAMinute »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #41
freetime2 wrote: post #5

My kids never had any interest in Labubu, but have been caught up in other fads like Pokemon cards. My sense is that these kinds of trends are mostly driven by scarcity. If you manage to get your hands on one, then you get the feeling of owning something rare, exclusive, and desirable amongst your peers - which is enough reason on its own to want something. You can also convince yourself that paying the normal MSRP i…

All of these gambling box toys are a way to simulate a reality where you can actually afford meaningful and expensive things - like real estate, nice cars, etc. When those are entirely out of budget for someone they might cope with a $30 toy they purchased for $200, which then can get milked by installing onto your belt.

I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time.

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#69

Post by freetime2 »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #62
freetime2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have long been popular, but the popularity has increased more than 5x since the pandemic. They were printing less than 2 billion a year before then [1], and are now selling more than 10 billion a year despite shortages, scalping, etc [2]. Perhaps "boom" is a better word for it than "fad". But my point is just that this demand seems to be largely driven by artifical scarcity, speculation, influencers - similar to…

Can you really say they're scarce if they're printing 5x as many, by your own words? Look I agree with you, kids find YouTube videos about really compelling IP really compelling! But that is the story, with Pokémon cards and Labubu. Artificial scarcity, which a bajillion games try to do, most of them failing, doesn't alone move the needle on appeal. It's basically meaningless as a design choice. That's what you mean…

> Can you really say they're scarce if they're printing 5x as many, by your own words?

All the local stores that sell random packs of Pokemon cards are sold out. So is Amazon, etc. If I wanted to buy some right now, the only way I could do it is through scalpers. So yes - they are scarce.

I think The Pokemon Company is very intentional about how many cards they print. As many as possible without saturating the market. I'm sure they employ people with degrees in business and economics whose job it is to figure that out.

> You don't know why they find Pokémon appealing.

That's not true. I like Pokemon. I have a Pokemon sticker on my laptop. I understand that there is intrinsic value to a Pokemon game, figurine, and even a cool holographic trading card. But the reason people are buying random packs from scalpers which usually just contain worthless junk cards is the hope of scoring a rare card. It's the scarcity.

That's also the reason they are sold that way instead of just selling you the cards you want as singles. If I could just go out and buy any special art card for $100 direct from The Pokemon Company (a huge margin for them), it would completely tank prices and ultimately demand.

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#70

Post by tredre3 »

alephnerd wrote: post #49
buildbot wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this is true. HN was well known to CS people in my undergrad and I’m barely a millennial.

I'm roughly the same age (maybe a bit older) as you and frankly, we are middle age. Yet by HN standards we skew young.

Do you have a source for that? I'm likely the same age as you are and I usually feel like people on HN don't swing that widely away from our age group, but based on vibes alone I would have put the median HN poster closer to 25-30 than to 50.
Post reply on HN