A showcase of Pop Mart characters including Molly (Kenny Wong), DIMOO (Ayan Deng), Labubu (Kasing Lung), and others—created by artists appearing at Pop Toy Show Singapore 2025.
Who Made Labubu? Meet the Artists Behind Pop Mart’s Most Iconic Toys
Nearly 30 million people searched for Labubu in the past month. Here’s who created him—and the artists behind Molly, DIMOO, Skullpanda, and more.
⏰ MON Jun 9, 2025 @ 5 PM PST
🐟 Published from Seattle, WA
🔨 Built by Chase Burns Broderick
In the past 30 days, Google searches for “Labubu” have exploded to nearly 30 million worldwide—up over 100 percent month-over-month. With that momentum, it’s no wonder Pop Mart is spotlighting its star creators at its upcoming summer Pop Toy Show Singapore 2025. Below, you’ll meet the illustrators and storytellers turning blind-box characters into global search phenomena—starting with the monster everyone’s googling right now.
1. Kasing Lung & The Monsters (Labubu)
📜 Kasing Lung – From Picture-Book Illustrator to Art-Toy Canon
Born in Hong Kong (1972) and raised in a Dutch village, Kasing Lung absorbed equal parts Nordic folklore, classic comics and Hong Kong pop culture before winning Belgium’s national Illustration Award and pivoting to toys in 2010. His 2015 story-book series The Monsters birthed a snaggle-toothed elf called Labubu, now the flagship of Pop Mart’s fastest-growing line. Contemporary-art heavyweight Takashi Murakami has since hosted Lung’s solo shows, placing him in the same lineage as Michael Lau and KAWS for marrying narrative illustration with collectible vinyl.
“It starts with sketches. Then we build the storybook world and expand to toys and merchandise at the same time—we create the world together.” —Lung, on his character-creation process (May 2025 interview)
Why he leads: No artist drives more traffic to Pop Mart than Lung and Labubu. The character’s surge—“Labubu doll,” “Labubu Pop Mart,” and purchase-intent phrases like “Where can I buy a Labubu” dominate U.S. trend charts—has made Lung the single biggest draw for Pop Mart.
Signature style: Lung’s figures live in the narrow gap between cute and unsettling. Reviewers call Labubu an elf-like sprite with an eerie grin that is somewhere between sweet and scary and hail it as a touchstone of the global creepy-cute aesthetic. The wide eyes, snaggle-toothed smile, and Nordic-folklore ear tips give each Monster a fairy-tale innocence, while rough brush textures and off-beat color palettes keep them from sliding into pure kawaii. Limited runs—Halloween Labubu, Big Into Energy Labubu—vanish in minutes, spawning price-watch searches like “Labubu real vs fake” and driving secondary-market premiums that routinely triple retail.
2. Kenny Wong & Molly
📜 Kenny Wong – The Painter Who Sparked Asia’s Blind-Box Boom
Hong Kong illustrator Kenny Wong sketched the wide-eyed, beret-wearing Molly in 2006 after meeting a pouting young art student. Molly’s 2007 vinyl debut—and her 2016 partnership with Pop Mart—helped catapult the brand from niche kiosk to global giant. Today Molly remains Pop Mart’s most profitable IP, with co-branded runs from Lamborghini to Hello Kitty.
“Designer toys will be a key industry in the future.” — Wong to China News Service, May 2025
Why Kenny Wong is still Pop Mart’s marquee name: When the first Space Molly blind-box series dropped in late 2019 it went viral on Weibo. Five years on, Wong’s astronaut-helmet reinterpretation keeps Molly at the top of the search charts: Google Trends shows “molly pop mart” scoring its highest relative interest in Singapore, Macao, and Hong Kong over the past five years, with Thailand, mainland China, and Malaysia close behind. A wave of crossover searches—“Molly × Sanrio,” “Molly Pingu,” “Molly Powerpuff Girl”—shows that brand mash-ups now move the needle more than simple re-colors.
Signature style: Molly’s appeal is all about a stable face wrapped in endlessly re-skinnable themes. The wide-set glass eyes, blunt bob, and faint pout never change. Wong treats each series as cosplay for the same girl. Hundreds of outfits now exist, but the sculpt stays the same. Early Mollys wore muted pastel oils inspired by vintage storybooks; newer releases glow in Day-Glo vinyl, evidence that the sculpt works just as well for retro nostalgia as for hyper-modern palettes.
3. Xiong Miao & Skullpanda
📜 Xiong Miao – Pop Mart’s Gothic Muse
Chinese illustrator Xiong Miao cut her teeth designing CG concept design art before unveiling Skullpanda in 2018, a dark-cute alter-ego defined by a skull cap, braided buns, and high-fashion silhouettes. The character’s breakout moment came two years later: Pop Mart’s “Ancient Castle” blind-box series sold 60,000 units in one second and put Skullpanda on every collector’s radar. Art-toy blogs describe Skullpanda’s gothic-kawaii vibe as a modern complement to artists like Junko Mizuno.
“Skullpanda is another version of myself—freer, louder, and more boundless.” —Xiong Miao (SNKRDUNK Magazine, June 2025)
Where she leads: Google Trends shows a 5× year-on-year jump for “Skullpanda Pop Mart.” Singapore ranks #1 in search interest, with TikTok as the dominant discovery channel.
@hakudays ✨LIFE IS WORTH LIVING ✨ @POP MART US @POP MART #skullpanda #skullpandalimpressionnisme #popmart #blindbox #bagcharm #unboxing #blindboxopening ♬ original sound - Haku
Signature style: Skullpanda was Pop Mart’s first blind-box line to mould couture touches—lace veils, micro-handbags, pearl teardrops—directly into the vinyl tooling instead of printing them on flat surfaces, giving each figure real fashion depth. Xiong Miao treats every wave like a seasonal look-book—Ancient Castle for gothic Victoriana, City of Nights for latex streetwear, upcoming L’impressionnisme for pastel tulle—so fans follow Skullpanda the way sneakerheads track runway drops.
4. Ayan Deng & DIMOO
📜 Ayan Deng – Dream-World Voyager
After graduating from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2017, Ayan Deng co-founded Mountain Studio and later her own YAN Studio. She spent roughly two years sketching a cloud-capped dreamland before DIMOO World’s first blind-box series, “Lost Animal,” launched on July 2019. Reporting from the 2019 Beijing Toy Show notes that Deng’s fan meetings “attracted hundreds,” and that side-characters—Candy, Snooks, Niko and Mr Worm—populate the realm where Dimoo finds courage in his dreams.
Where DIMOO leads: Google Trends for the past 12 months puts Singapore at an interest index of 100 for “Dimoo Pop Mart,” with Hong Kong at 62 and Bangkok/Thailand in the high 50s, confirming that Southeast Asia remains the line’s loudest fan-base. Most recently, the March 2025 “DIMOO × Disney” launch marked the first time Deng brought an outside IP into her dream-scape, proving the DIMOO World framework can stretch to guest franchises without losing its core identity.
Signature style: DIMOO’s appeal comes from its pastel-melancholy palette and storybook staging: reviews note the boyish figure often appears alone in rainy or outer-space vignettes, giving Pop Mart a rare, emotionally vulnerable IP. Each wave functions as a chapter—Circus, Aquarium, Moonlight, By Your Side—using recurring friends like Baby Cloud to explore themes of friendship and imperfection, a narrative structure collectors’ guides call central to the brand’s staying power. Formally, Ayan Deng pushes materials beyond standard vinyl with translucent PVC cloud-packs, pearlescent limbs, and knit-texture moulds.
5. Bao & KUBO
📜 Bao – The Heart Behind KUBO
Shenzhen illustrator Bao founded MEØW Studio in 2021 and introduced KUBO a year later—a buzz-cut city kid who is “a pioneer at heart, with an ecclectic array of hobbies that he dives into with passion.” Collector site Art Toy Familia calls KUBO the brand’s quiet guardian, noting that every design carries a message of compassion and self-truth. Google Trends shows interest spiking in May 2025, the month Pop Mart teased the rainbow-tinted “KUBO — Love Wins” edition.
“KUBO’s new ‘Love Wins’ edition… folds queer identity directly into the character’s canon, turning Pride from decorative theme into narrative fact.” — Pop Mart Daily (May 2025)
Where Kubo has an edge: Uniquely—Pinterest traffic around Kubo is high, nearly matching its impact on TikTok, a rarity for a Pop Mart IP. The Philippines has overtaken Singapore for “KUBO Pop Mart” query volume, underscoring Southeast Asia as the character’s loudest market.
Signature style: KUBO mixes laid-back streetwear with gentle symbolism: a blank expression, oversized hoodie, and props like a heart-shaped frying pan. Lines such as “Breathing In” and “Walks of Life” layer mindfulness themes over everyday city life. The Pride-month “Love Wins” drop cements a mission: turning a humble vinyl figure into an avatar for authenticity, empathy, and now LGBTQ+ visibility.
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Labubu’s nearly 30 million searches in the past 30 days prove the Pop Mart hype is real—but The Monsters and IP like Molly, Skullpanda, DIMOO, and KUBO are only the opening act.
Next, we’ll profile:
Cry Baby – the fastest-rising Pop Mart character
Hirono – fine-art flair with global pop-up buzz
Sweet Bean, Peach Riot, and Hacipupu – three IPs quietly building cult followings
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