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On Labubu and the Hyperreal

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Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#71

Post by doctorpangloss »

freetime2 wrote: post #69
doctorpangloss wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> That's not true. I like Pokemon. I understand that there is intrinsic value to a Pokemon game, figurine, and even a cool holographic trading card.

Okay, see, so you don't know what the appeal is. You wouldn't know where to begin creating your own Pokémon. You would be like, well let's make some monsters. You wouldn't get it. If you did know how, you would be a billionaire. Do you get it now? It isn't enough to just make gacha mechanics.

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#72

Post by Gigachad »

Veserv wrote: post #43
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…

Their popularity is a fad. You are talking about their popularity when they first released in the US. They faded significantly for at least a decade if not two until seeing a recent resurgence so massive even random corner stores carry pokemon card packs these days.

What gets me is that no one actually plays the game or cares about the cards. They buy them purely to resell them to someone else later for more. It's just like crypto in physical form.

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#73

Post by Gigachad »

john_strinlai wrote: post #11
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...

indeed, i always understood a "fad" to mean some short-lived trend. meanwhile, pokemon is probably around the same age as the average HN user.

Pokemon itself is not a trend but the current hype around the cards is and has only been around for a few years.

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#74

Post by Gigachad »

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...

Every TCG buyer I've spoken to is always "up" on cards, though if you dig further you'll find they haven't cashed in any actual gain and are just mentally up based on what they think they could sell them for. While also mentally discarding any losses.

The real winners are probably the people reselling the unopened packs for slightly higher than retail since they have removed the gambling aspect.

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#75

Post by Gigachad »

nkrisc wrote: post #8
alephnerd wrote: post #4

Alternatively - who cares? If some people feel happy playing with Labubus, mechanical keyboards, or why do you care? It's their life and not yours. Additionally, this article also clearly fails to deep dive into how Pop Mart basically exported Asian style marketing strategies to the West. Back in Asia, conspicuous consumption and quick commerce is not viewed negatively the same way it is amongst Western HN/Redditors,…

Unfortunately many products that “make people happy” are nothing more than plastic trash pollution. How many resources have been used and how much damage done to ship plastic trash across oceans, that doesn’t even do anything? > why do you care? It's their life and not yours. Because ultimately it does affect me, it affects all of us.

Consumerism also doesn't really make people happy in the same way alcohol isn't a cure for depression. It's a short term rush that leaves you in a deeper more empty pit after.

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#76

Post by Karrot_Kream »

tredre3 wrote: post #70
alephnerd wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In 2007 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=63294 the median age was 25.5 and mean 27.3. In 2022 (15 years later) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30897468 the median age using midpoints was between 35.44 and mean age was 37.22. If we presume that older folks tend to not answer these (so polls skew young), then I think it's safe to say young-Gen-X to older-millenial is the core demographic here.

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#77

Post by userbinator »

The name itself, Labubu, is obviously chosen for babyish associations.

To me, it sounds Filipino. As for the appearance, I think it's a strange mix between cute and grotesque, like a combination of Japanese and Western styles, which might explain its popularity.

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#78

Post by freetime2 »

Gigachad wrote: post #72
Veserv wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their popularity is a fad. You are talking about their popularity when they first released in the US. They faded significantly for at least a decade if not two until seeing a recent resurgence so massive even random corner stores carry pokemon card packs these days.

What gets me is that no one actually plays the game or cares about the cards. They buy them purely to resell them to someone else later for more. It's just like crypto in physical form.

When my kids open a pack they usually don't even look at what cards they get. They spread them out just enough to see the border - which is enough to tell whether you've gotten a rare card or not. I'm sure they've thrown plenty of cards in the junk bin without ever once looking at them.

The "special art rare" ones are admittedly pretty cool, and those do get taken out and looked at from time to time. Usually when friends come over.

Re: On Labubu and the Hyperreal

#80

Post by alephnerd »

tredre3 wrote: post #70
alephnerd wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Do you have a source for that

Obviously not. HN is an anonymous forum that doesn't collect that kind of data. But given the fact that a large portion of childhood and early 20s references on HN tend to discuss life in the 1980s-2000s and don't reference the Great Recession highlights a large portion of HNers would have been born in the late 70s to at most early 90s.

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