In early 2025, a 17-second TikTok clip showed a pair of hands peeling open the back panel of a Labubu plush toy to reveal a blinking LED circuit board inside. The caption read: “Me cracking Labubu.” No context. No explanation. Within 72 hours, the video had 4.2 million views. Within six weeks, the hashtag #MeCrackingLabubu crossed 420 million. By March 2026, it had cleared 3.8 billion views across TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Douyin, making it one of the most sustained meme formats of the decade.
But the meme isn’t really about a toy. “Me cracking Labubu” is a viral phrase used as emotional shorthand for breaking under pressure, where “cracking” a sealed blind-box figure represents the moment when stress, expectations, or burnout finally split the surface. The meme works because the crack isn’t destruction. It’s release.
Last updated: May 2026
Quick answers
What does “me cracking Labubu” mean?
“Me cracking Labubu” refers to the viral TikTok trend of filming yourself opening, peeling apart, or modifying a Labubu blind-box figure. On the surface it’s about customizing a collectible toy. As a meme, it functions as emotional shorthand for breaking under pressure, where the physical “crack” represents a moment of release from stress or burnout.
Where did the me cracking Labubu trend come from?
The trend originated in early 2025 with a 17-second TikTok clip showing someone peeling open a Labubu plush’s back panel to reveal an LED circuit board inside. The video hit 4.2 million views in 72 hours. By March 2026, the hashtag #MeCrackingLabubu had accumulated over 3.8 billion views across TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Douyin.
What is a Labubu?
Labubu is a collectible character created by Hong Kong-born artist Kasing Lung as part of his 2015 book series The Monsters. Since a 2019 licensing deal with Pop Mart, Labubu has been produced in over 300 versions, from $15 vinyl figures to $960 mega editions. Pop Mart’s Monsters IP generated $1.95 billion in revenue in 2025 alone.
What does “me cracking Labubu” actually mean?
The phrase operates on three distinct layers, and which one applies depends on context.
The first is literal. “Cracking” a Labubu means physically modifying the sealed collectible: removing stitching, bypassing safety locks, accessing internal components. Some modders replace batteries, install custom LED lights, or embed NFC chips that trigger augmented reality experiences when scanned. It’s a maker subculture that treats a $15 blind-box toy as raw material.
The second layer is emotional. When someone drops a “me cracking Labubu” GIF into a group chat about work deadlines, rent, or grad school applications, they’re not talking about a toy. They’re saying: I’m under pressure and something’s giving way. Psychologists call this kind of meme “emotional shorthand,” a low-risk way to communicate distress without the vulnerability of saying it directly. The Labubu’s exaggerated face, mouth open in a permanent gasp, mirrors what the sender is feeling. The crack isn’t a catastrophe. It’s a controlled release valve.
The third layer is about control. In coding, “cracking” means bypassing restrictions. In slang, it means figuring something out the hard way. When users say “me cracking Labubu,” they’re declaring they’ve reverse-engineered a system that was designed to stay sealed. Pop Mart sells the mystery. Modders reject it. That tension between manufactured scarcity and personal agency is part of why the meme resonated with Gen Z audiences who grew up watching algorithms decide what they see, buy, and believe.
Why did the me cracking Labubu meme go viral?
Three factors stacked at once: the right emotional moment, the right format, and the right character.
The timing mattered. The meme surfaced during what the American Psychological Association’s 2025 Stress in America survey identified as a period of record-high reported stress among adults aged 18-34. Gen Z wasn’t looking for therapy language. They wanted a GIF that said everything in two seconds. A Labubu splitting open did the job. The same generation driving trends like toothpaste dressing and Stacey face AI apps was also using memes as a primary emotional communication tool.
The format mattered. Unlike text-heavy memes, “me cracking Labubu” is almost entirely visual: a pair of hands, a recognizable character, a physical crack, often set to distorted audio. That combination makes it instantly readable across languages. The meme spread simultaneously through English-language TikTok, Mandarin-language Douyin, Korean Instagram, and Spanish-speaking Twitter without requiring translation. Few meme formats cross that many language barriers that fast.
And Labubu, specifically, mattered. The character’s face is already dramatic: wide eyes, gaping mouth, tiny fangs. It looks like it’s reacting to its own destruction. That built-in expressiveness is why Labubu worked as the vehicle for this meme in a way that, say, a Funko Pop or a Beanie Baby wouldn’t have. The design did half the emotional work before anyone added a caption.
How did the meme spread beyond TikTok?
The jump from TikTok to everywhere else happened in stages, and each platform gave the meme a slightly different function.
On TikTok and Douyin, where the meme started, “me cracking Labubu” videos are performance pieces. Creators film elaborate setups: slow-motion cracks, dramatic lighting, sometimes ASMR-style audio of the seams splitting. The production value escalated quickly. Within months of the first viral clip, creators were using professional camera rigs and editing software to capture the exact moment a Labubu shell gives way. Some of the most-viewed versions have no text at all. The image does the work.
On Instagram Reels, the meme shifted to reaction content. Users pair the cracking Labubu GIF with on-screen text describing whatever broke them that day: “me when my landlord raises rent for the third time,” “me after checking my student loan balance,” “me realizing I forgot to eat lunch again.” The GIF became a universal reaction image, similar to how the “this is fine” dog meme functions, but with a more physical, visceral quality.
On Reddit, communities like r/labubu and r/brainrot adopted the meme as both a cultural reference and a collector in-joke. A thread in r/brainrot titled “Lore accurate 99.9%” pulled over 116 upvotes discussing the meme’s deeper cultural resonance. Reddit users tend to dissect the meaning more than other platforms, debating whether the meme is about consumerism, mental health, or both. The bootleg Labubu market, where knockoff figures sell for $3-5 on sites like AliExpress and Temu, also became part of the joke. Users post photos of off-brand Labubu figures with captions like “me cracking the $4 Labubu from Temu” as a meta-commentary on both the meme and the collectible market’s pricing.
By October 2025, the meme had reached messaging apps and workplace Slack channels. People were dropping the Labubu GIF into professional contexts the same way they’d drop a thumbs-up emoji. When someone posts the cracking Labubu GIF after a long meeting, everyone in the channel knows what it means. No explanation needed.
Who created Labubu?
Kasing Lung, born in 1972 in Hong Kong, grew up in Utrecht, Netherlands, where Nordic folklore shaped his visual imagination. After graduating from art school in 1995, he returned to Hong Kong to work as an illustrator. When the 2003 SARS epidemic cratered Hong Kong’s creative economy, he relocated to Antwerp, Belgium, and began illustrating children’s books for the Belgian publisher De Eenhoorn. He became the first Chinese artist to win Belgium’s national Illustration Award.
In 2012, Lung returned to Hong Kong and partnered with How2Work to design collectible figures. In 2015, he published The Monsters, a trilogy of short children’s novels rooted in Nordic and Celtic mythology. The cast included Labubu, a rabbit-eared creature whose name Lung has said comes from a nonsense word his daughter used to say. The character was intentionally designed to look unsettling rather than cute, with Lung describing Labubu as a representation of “what we fear often just wants to be understood.”
Pop Mart, the Beijing-based toy company founded in 2010, secured exclusive commercialization rights to Labubu in 2019. That deal turned a niche art-book character into a mass-market blind-box phenomenon. By 2025, Pop Mart had released over 300 different Labubu versions, from 8-centimeter vinyl figures at $15 to 79-centimeter “mega” editions at $960. The company operates over 500 retail stores and 2,300 automated vending machines called Robo Shops across 30+ countries, with flagship locations in cities like Tokyo, London, Los Angeles, and Bangkok.
The celebrity endorsement layer accelerated Labubu’s visibility. Lisa Manobal of BLACKPINK was photographed wearing a Labubu bag charm in Bangkok in late 2024, a moment that triggered what Pop Mart’s team later described as a 30% sales spike in Southeast Asian markets within a single week. Other celebrities, from Rihanna to Bad Bunny, have been spotted with the figures. But the “me cracking Labubu” meme did something no celebrity endorsement could: it made the brand participatory rather than aspirational. You don’t need to own a rare Labubu to post the meme. You just need to feel like you’re cracking.
How big is the Labubu business?
Pop Mart’s 2025 annual report tells the story in hard numbers. Total company revenue hit 37.12 billion yuan ($5.4 billion), up 184.7% year-over-year. The Monsters IP family, which houses Labubu, generated 14.16 billion yuan ($1.95 billion) in revenue alone, a 365.7% increase. That single IP accounted for 38% of Pop Mart’s total sales, up from 23% the year before.
The growth wasn’t evenly distributed. Pop Mart’s Americas business, centered on the U.S., skyrocketed 748.4% to 6.81 billion yuan. Mainland China revenue grew 134.6% to 20.85 billion yuan. The company’s net profit surged 284.5% to 13.08 billion yuan.
But here’s the tension investors flagged. Pop Mart’s stock dropped 22% in the days following the earnings release in March 2026, according to CNBC’s reporting. The concern wasn’t the numbers. The concern was concentration risk. When 38% of your revenue comes from one IP and that IP’s cultural relevance depends partly on an unpredictable meme cycle, investors get nervous. Pop Mart CEO Wang Ning responded by saying the company aims for at least 20% growth in 2026 with a focus on “sustainable and profitable growth.”
The blind-box market overall has grown into a $12 billion global industry as of 2026, driven primarily by Gen Z and millennial collectors who treat the figures as what industry analysts call “emotional companions” rather than traditional toys. That same consumer psychology shows up in how fashion startups are borrowing the Labubu playbook to build scarcity-driven brand loyalty.
Why are Gen Z obsessed with cracking blind boxes?
The psychology isn’t complicated. It’s the same reason slot machines work.
Psychologists call it intermittent reinforcement: random rewards create stronger behavioral loops than predictable ones. When you open a blind box, you don’t know if you’re getting the common figure or the rare “secret” variant that resells for 10x the purchase price. That uncertainty triggers a dopamine response before you even see what’s inside. The anticipation is the product.
But the “cracking” meme adds a layer that standard blind-box collecting doesn’t have. According to a 2026 study published by the American Psychological Association, blind-box consumption among young adults correlates strongly with what researchers term “emotional consumption,” where the purchase serves a mood-regulation function rather than a utilitarian one. Buyers aren’t collecting. They’re self-soothing.
The “cracking” variant takes this further. Where standard collectors want to preserve the figure, modders want to break it open, rewire it, make it their own. That act of controlled destruction resonates with a generation that grew up inside systems they didn’t design: algorithmic feeds, standardized testing, gig-economy career paths. Cracking a sealed Labubu is a two-second rebellion against manufactured scarcity. It doesn’t change anything structural. But it feels like agency. And sometimes that’s the point.
There’s a financial dimension too. The secondary market for rare Labubu figures has created a speculative layer where “secret” variants from a $15 blind box can resell for $150-300 on StockX and Mercari. The “cracking” meme partially satirizes this dynamic. When you literally crack open a Labubu and rewire it, you’re destroying its resale value. You’re choosing personal expression over market value. For a generation priced out of housing and skeptical of traditional wealth accumulation, that trade-off carries meaning beyond the toy itself.
What the meme tells us about culture right now
The “me cracking Labubu” meme is one data point in a larger pattern. Over the past two years, the memes that sustain momentum aren’t the funny ones. They’re the ones that name something people feel but haven’t articulated yet. “Brat summer” named a specific kind of unapologetic energy. “Demure” named performative restraint. “Me cracking Labubu” names the moment between holding it together and letting go.
That’s why the meme hasn’t faded the way most TikTok trends do. It isn’t tied to a song or a dance or a specific event. It’s tied to a feeling that keeps recurring: the pressure of being functional, capable, and optimized in a world that demands all three constantly. Every time someone has a bad week, the Labubu GIF is ready.
For Pop Mart’s business, that emotional stickiness is both an asset and a risk. Labubu’s meme status keeps the brand culturally relevant in ways that no marketing budget could manufacture. But meme relevance is inherently unpredictable. Pop Mart can’t control when or how the next viral moment hits, and the 22% stock drop after earnings shows that investors know it.
For founders and brand builders watching from the outside, the lesson is specific: the products that become memes aren’t the ones with the biggest ad budgets. They’re the ones with enough visual identity and emotional ambiguity that people can project their own meaning onto them. Kasing Lung didn’t design Labubu to be a burnout metaphor. He designed a monster with an open mouth and wide eyes. The internet did the rest. That kind of cultural adoption can’t be engineered, but it can be enabled by building products with strong visual identity and leaving room for reinterpretation.
The meme also signals a shift in how younger consumers relate to the brands they buy from. In the traditional model, brand loyalty meant repeat purchases and positive word-of-mouth. In the “cracking” model, brand engagement looks like modification, remixing, and sometimes deliberate destruction. Pop Mart sells a sealed product designed to stay sealed. The most engaged fans break it open. That paradox is uncomfortable for any company built on controlled scarcity, but it’s also a sign of genuine cultural relevance. When people care enough about your product to take it apart, you’ve built something that matters to them beyond the transaction. The question for Pop Mart, and for any brand that accidentally becomes a meme, is whether that matters more than protecting the product as designed. It’s the same tension visible in MrBeast’s creator marketplace and the broader shift toward community-driven monetization across platforms.
