Pop Mart, purveyor of Labubu[1], is branching out in the world of creepy pop culture collectibles with a little help from Chucky[2]. The blind box drop arrives September 11, timed to coincide with Halloween season and aiming to bolster the company’s roster of animation-influenced characters. At the recent San Diego Comic-Con, Pop Mart made a splash with the Monsters series Big Into Energy, Skullpanda, and Peach Riot, as well as its latest Star Wars line.
During io9’s preview at SDCC, Emily Brough, Pop Mart’s head of IP licensing in the Americas, talked about the company’s plans leading into Halloween. “We have this amazing product and these amazing characters and then we’re just extending the excitement and innovation to every touchpoint with our fans. We just love doing that and we love just continuing to bring the creativity of our characters,” she said of creating experiences around specific seasons, including the spooky Chucky release.
The Chucky collab is such a natural choice for horror fans. It will feature toy box-style packaging for various incarnations of the character throughout Don Mancini’s franchise legacy. “We like to lean in, especially in the U.S. Halloween is such a meaningful holiday, so we had a lot of fun here really leaning into that with product development,” Brough said of the Universal Pictures terror toy going mini and all in on the blind-box craze.
As someone scared of owning a 1:1 Chucky, I’m more comfortable with a miniature threat or pulling a Glen or Tiffany. “We made them kind of cute because that’s what we do. There will be more and more coming out around Halloween and some other key holidays for us,” Brough said.
We’re hoping for a second series of Chucky blind boxes because, as fans know, there are so many variants from the movies and the TV show we’d love to get our hands on—give us Phantom Chucky, the Colonel, or even more of Tiffany and Glen(da).
Brough continued, “We’re excited to bring [top IP] collaborations from beloved studios all over the world, and we’re also continuing to build out our artist roster and have the roster of artists that we work with reflect the diversity of the markets that we’re in. So we’re really, really excited to continue to bring in new artists and new IP and then extend those stories into the Pop Mart universe as well.”
As far as extending excitement for their existing licenses and their original IP drops, Brough elaborated on how the new toy titan aims to engage its audience.
“There’s so much great storytelling within all of the characters. At the core we are a pop culture entertainment company and we work with these amazing independent artists from all over the world to bring their characters to life and really bring the storytelling to life through collectible design, [but] we’re looking for ways to continue to extend their stories,” she said of the potential for their properties, such as Kasing Lung’s Labubu[3], to find life in other entertainment mediums.
“We’ve been doing it kind of [through] short animation for the social media channels to share a little bit more about the story of the series or the stories of the characters and every series is really building out either the story or the personality for each person. That is something that we are doing now and we’re looking forward to continuing to build out the storytelling in new and innovative ways.”
When we asked if that involves U.S. versions of the overseas pop-up and theme park offerings to meet Labubu, Brough doesn’t deny that could be in the works.
“Later this year we’ll be looking at some pop-up shop experiences, and we’ll continue to extend those out throughout not only later this year but also into next year,” she said.
As for getting immersive experiences such as Popland in the states, she added, “It’s a format that we have globally and that we’ve seen a lot of success with so we’re looking forward to bringing that to the US as well as some of those offline experiences. Popland is expanding right now, so over there in Beijing, as the offline experience, [and] we’re constantly looking for ways to extend that.”
Check out the Chucky drop in the gallery below. Buy online here[4] or at your local Pop Mart location beginning September 11.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel[5], Star Wars[6], and Star Trek[7] releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV[8], and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who[9].
References
- ^ Labubu (gizmodo.com)
- ^ Chucky (gizmodo.com)
- ^ Kasing Lung’s Labubu (gizmodo.com)
- ^ online here (www.popmart.com)
- ^ Marvel (gizmodo.com)
- ^ Star Wars (gizmodo.com)
- ^ Star Trek (gizmodo.com)
- ^ DC Universe on film and TV (gizmodo.com)
- ^ Doctor Who (gizmodo.com)