Labubu, the vinyl plush collectible with a snaggletoothed grin and knowingly mischievous eyes, has become a viral sensation and one of China’s fastest-rising exports. Now, after a year of rapid growth, it’s poised to attract even more attention, this time from regulators in the United States and Germany over claims of forced labor.
Earlier this year, China Labor Watch submitted complaints with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Germany’s Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control, also known as BAFA, saying it had uncovered evidence of worker exploitation at a Chinese factory that exclusively manufactures the doll for Pop Mart.
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The New York-based nonprofit, which investigated Shunjia Toys in southeast China’s Jiangxi province last summer and fall, said it found workers subjected to excessive hours, deceptive employment practices, wage theft and abusive living and working conditions, all indicators of forced labor as defined by the International Labour Organization.
Chinese labor law limits monthly overtime to 36 hours, but China Labor Watch found workers often toiled under a “long day shift” system that added more than 100 hours each month, and as many as 145 during peak periods. It saw no sign of child labor, but it flagged employees as young as 16 in assembly line roles without the legal protections meant to shield minors from hazardous work and aggressive quotas. Workers also said ventilation was poor, exposing them to fibrous dust and spray-paint chemicals that made breathing difficult and could harm their health.
“The factory is very good at putting on a show. People from Pop Mart often come to inspect hygiene and product quality,” said one worker, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. “Before inspections, the team leader notifies us roughly when the inspectors will arrive and tells us to clean our workstations and tidy up. Management tells us that if inspectors ask how products are made or what the requirements are, we should explain the standardized procedures. But in reality, what we usually do doesn’t always follow what’s written in the manuals.”
Still, problems began to surface as early as onboarding, when workers were given no more than five minutes to sign contracts that left details such as employment duration, job description and salary blank or incomplete.
“The advertisement said 10,000 yuan ($1,451) per month, but after entering the factory, it was completely impossible,” the same worker said. “You only earn 0.3 yuan (4 cents) for each toy you complete. I wanted to leave and raised the issue with management several times, but they kept delaying it. There was no way to leave. Under the piece-rate system, there is no overtime pay.”
Interviews with more than 50 workers inside Shunjia Toys and 36 outside found reports of bullying by managers, verbal sexual harassment, overcrowded dormitories and fines for infractions such as smoking, tardiness and missing tools. Two cafeterias served 4,500 workers in staggered shifts, though many described the meals as “unsanitary” and “unpalatable.”
“Meals are free, which is good,” said another worker. “But hygiene is really poor, and sometimes the food tastes terrible. Since it’s free, we just endure it. After the previous group finishes, there is often very little food left. When the next group arrives, new dishes are not ready yet, so there are only leftovers, sometimes even mixed together.”
Shunjia Toys—a newer, if “core,” supplier for Pop Mart’s latest Labubu series—operates four packaging workshops with 10–15 lines each, producing a conservative daily output of 182,000 toys under normal conditions, said Li Qiang, China Labor Watch’s founder and executive director. With roughly 300 working days annually—workers get just one day off a week—this scales to 54.6 million units, dwarfing the factory’s disclosed capacity of 12 million toys per year.
“It shows how strong sales have been,” Li said. “They hadn’t expected such high sales, but once that happened, they kept adding more workers to the factory.”
Labubu is the brainchild of Kasing Lung, a Hong Kong-born artist who was raised in the Netherlands. The puckish figure draws heavily on Nordic fairy tales, including stories of elves. In 2019, Lung partnered with Pop Mart, now a Hong Kong-listed company, to turn the character into a toy line.
Demand for Pop Mart’s products—not just Labubu, but also ranges like Skullpanda and Sonny Angel—is surging, driven in no small part by blind boxes that keep the contents a surprise. That lottery-like thrill has helped propel revenue past 37 billion yuan ($5 billion) in 2025, 185 percent the year before, with sales across all categories exceeding 400 million units globally.
The Monsters collection, which includes Labubu, accounted for over 100 million of those sales. The toys have also become a status symbol, an IYKYK wink seen dangling from the purses of celebrities such as Rihanna, Dua Lipa and Blackpink’s Lisa. A standard doll sells for $20-$30, and rare editions can fetch thousands of dollars. The craze has even spawned knockoffs, disparagingly known as Lafufu. A feature film is also in the works, helmed by the screenwriter and director behind “Paddington.”
Li didn’t find China Labor Watch’s findings particularly unexpected; in his experience, Chinese factories are “generally like this,” perhaps even “slightly worse” in this case. What struck him was something else: the factory’s apparent acknowledgment of practices that could amount to forced labor, such as requiring workers to sign agreements stating they wouldn’t receive wages until after seven days of work. In all his decades in the labor field, he said, this was a first, especially as China faces mounting human rights scrutiny from the West. Most factories, Li added, are better at hiding it.
“At Pop Mart, we take the welfare and safety of workers at our OEM factories very seriously,” a company spokesperson said, using an acronym for original equipment manufacturers, meaning companies that assemble products on behalf of another. “We conduct regular, standardized audits of our OEM supply chain partners, including annual independent third-party audits carried out by internationally recognized professional audit firms.”
Shunjia Toys could not be reached for comment.
In January, China Labor Watch wrote to BAFA under Germany’s Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, flagging potential forced labor issues in the Labubu supply chain. The submission was rejected within 10 days, Li said, likely because Pop Mart has fewer than 1,000 employees in Germany and is outside the law’s current scope.
The nonprofit tried again in February, focusing on three distributors in Germany that sell the dolls. After Li purchased a U.S.-sold Labubu labeled “Ganzhou 006-3,” matching a code China Labor Watch had spotted during its Shunjia Toys investigation, he also wrote to CBP. Under Section 307 of the 1930 Tariff Act, the agency prohibits importing products that are “mined, produced, or manufactured, wholly or in part,” by forced labor. Li didn’t identify any Uyghur workers or links to the northwest province of Xinjiang, which would have made the toys further inadmissible under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
A BAFA spokesperson said China Labor Watch’s latest submission is under review, adding that “as a general principle,” every complaint receives case-by-case scrutiny to determine whether it falls within the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act’s purview and whether the information provided is sufficiently substantiated. A CBP representative said the agency doesn’t comment on specific investigations to protect law enforcement-sensitive and business-confidential information.
For Li, the Labubu craze reflects a broader problem with consumerism, one also seen in fast fashion. The parallels are striking: Mystery packaging’s repeat-buying model mirrors the high-volume, low-cost dynamics of “haul” culture. Like clothing and trends, toys tied to a fleeting moment risk becoming landfill waste. In the end, he said, it’s the workers in the supply chain who bear the price.
“As long as there’s demand in the West, labor rights will always come second,” Li added.
