Marketers love to “surprise and delight.” So do consumers.
People are increasingly purchasing items without knowing exactly what product, or which variation of a product, they’re going to get. This year, the phenomenon of blind boxes or mystery boxes, which originated in Asian markets, took off with US consumers amid the growing popularity of keychain Labubu dolls and Sonny Angel figurines. Pop Mart, the brand behind Labubus and other blind-box brands, made 13.88 billion yuan ($1.93 billion) in the first half of this year alone.
MGA Entertainment sells blind-box items like LOL Surprise dolls, which first launched in 2016, and CMO Josh Hackbarth said the company is seeing a current “burst” in demand, which he credits in part to nostalgia and to the rise of the “kidult” consumer.
“A lot of the kids that grew up with our products and maybe some similar surprise unboxing ones now have adult money,” Hackbarth told us.
It’s not just toy brands getting in on the trend. Andy Rebhun, chief marketing and experience officer of fast-casual chain Cava, told us the brand decided to give out blind-box-style pita- chip plushies with the purchase of its Hot Harissa Meal earlier this month after seeing the social media fervor for Pop Mart items.
“The team decided to lean in and place a bet,” Rebhun said. “Sure enough, it was a really good bet for this moment in culture.”
For brands of all kinds, blind boxes can serve to encourage repeat purchases while presenting a marketing opportunity to reach customers of different ages and budgets. Beyond that, the excitement around unboxing mystery items is ripe for social, giving brands a chance to go viral and generate additional brand awareness online.
Small cost, big reward?
If there’s one thing that unites people of all ages, it’s a love of opening presents.
“Consumers really like the element of surprise and not knowing,” Rebhun said. “It’s like when you think about the holiday time when people unwrap a gift, it usually evokes a feeling of excitement and joy.”
While LOL Surprise’s main demographic is kids, Hackbarth said the brand has seen more interest from adults, especially among collector audiences, as it’s released lines with throwback IP, like the Powerpuff Girls and Care Bears.
Blind boxes can also provide an opportunity for brands with higher price points to reach customers with smaller budgets. Athleisure brand Set Active, streetwear brand Madhappy, and cookware brand Le Creuset are among the retailers that have used mystery boxes to help clear out inventory at lower price points, and luxury liquidation brands like Heat and Scarce sell mystery boxes filled with off-season, luxury fashion items at a discount.
“[It’s] a very covert, easy way to get [product] out the door,” Noah Eisemann, global managing director of social and influencer at VML, told us.
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As inflation and tariffs push up the prices of many everyday products, some consumers may view blind boxes as mini-luxuries or affordable treats, Eisemann said. The Le Creuset Factory to Table sale, for instance, offers consumers the chance to buy a mystery box that costs $50 and promises up to $350 worth of products.
LOL Surprise dolls encourage repeat purchases through a collect-them-all strategy, which sometimes involves interconnecting toys to crack a code or unlock a certain power once a set is complete. However, there are also benefits for brands that lean into the scarcity mindset to drum up product interest. For its activation, Cava set a limit of one plushie per customer across the US, Rebhun said—although he did hear of some people going back for seconds.
“We appreciate that excitement,” he said.
Show and tell
Whether it’s unboxing a Labubu doll or a Le Creuset mystery box, the widespread interest and emotional intrigue of a blind box is ripe for user-generated content.
Unboxing content has long thrived on YouTube, with 10- to 15-minute-long episodes showing off every item detail, but in the last couple of years, Hackbarth has observed an explosion of shorter and snappier creator-led unboxing videos on platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts. The #BlindBox tag on TikTok alone has more than 1.3 million posts, and some creators on the platform have built enormous followings from posting unboxing content.
“People want to tell others and show others what they’ve got and create that shared experience,” Hackbarth said.
The influx of social content that comes from blind boxes is what inspired Cava to venture into the space, Rebhun said. In a private Instagram channel with brand superfans, Cava prompted members to share pictures of their plushies once secured, but he said most of the plushie content online has been organic, he said.
“They created videos, they did Instagram static posts,” Rebhun said. “It’s really a pleasure to see that type of reaction to something like this because it’s everything that marketers and brands would want.”
MGA partners with creators to produce unboxing videos, Hackbarth said, and that content has generated hundreds of millions of views, both paid and organic. ASMR-style videos, he noted, are particularly appealing to some viewers.
The company is also experimenting with eventized, live unboxings, which are teased ahead of time to help build excitement and reach both kids and kidults alike.
That all can add to the dopamine hit of the surprise, which users can experience secondhand through the screen.
“It’s that thrill of the chase,” Hackbarth said.