How Hong Kong gave rise to Labubu and a designer toy movement now shaping global culture. The following sentence might make a globalist cry out for joy: A toy that is manufactured by a Chinese company in Vietnamese factories, designed by a Dutch artist in Belgium, inspired by indie toy culture in Hong Kong, and made viral thanks to a Thai K-pop star, has turned into the biggest Gen-Z cultural trend of 2025. That abomination of a sentence is the story of Labubu, the creepy-cute stuffed monster that swept the world this summer. You must have seen the trend by now, but most people are still unaware of the global, decade-long story that led up to it. Last week, I published a feature story about my journey into the heart of Labubu, how this cultural mania moment was created, and where it may go from here.

The Internet of things, often known as IoT, is a platform that allows all physical items globally to be linked to the Internet. Thanks to computer chips and other wireless networks, it is now quite simple to transform a massively inefficient thing into a high-tech machine with all of the capabilities necessary to assist in the day-to-day job. The field of data science, known as artificial intelligence (AI), is an advanced subfield in which people educate machines to understand human behavior by feeding them information from around the globe. It enables a device to acquire all the information and then operate human-like by learning from the new data input every second. In recent decades, the toy business has seen significant changes due to the introduction of IoT and AI.

It used to be that a simple doll or action figure would be a welcome surprise when we tore open our Christmas presents. But now that today's kids grow up in a world saturated with technology, do they expect their toys to be a bit cleverer too? Famous toy retailer Hamleys certainly thinks so, predicting a bumper Christmas for interactive tech toys. So what can we expect? Reyne Rice, chief executive of ToyTrends, actually thinks it's the simpler, educational tech toys that will be the real winners this Christmas.