PARIS’ Louvre Museum has become the latest hot spot for toy collectors, with enthusiasts lining up for exclusive designer toys from Chinese pop culture brand POP MART. These toys feature the brand’s iconic characters, like Labubu, but with a twist — they have been stylized using Western art masterpieces such as da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, van Gogh’s self-portrait, and Manet’s The Fifer. POP MART opened a 60-square-meter store near the museum last summer as part of its overseas expansion, drawing fans from across Europe. Victoire, a POP MART fan from France, has been collecting the brand’s blind box figurines for a year and a half. “I’m quite fascinated with the concepts the blind boxes contain. They are incredibly adorable and colorful. They bring joy to the inner child within me,” the 20-something woman said. For decades, China has been known as the “factory of the world” because of its low-cost products. POP MART’s designer toys stand as a prime example of how a new wave of innovative Chinese products are revolutionizing global perspectives within the toy industry in regard to “Made in China” products. Designer toys on a roll With its original intellectual property (IP) and innovative designs, Beijing-based POP MART has quickly risen in the burgeoning blind box market, where primarily young consumers are spending heavily on collectible figurines shrouded in mystery. The brand operates over 500 retail stores and nearly 2,500 Robo Shops worldwide. With the help of these brick-and-mortar stores and e-commerce platforms, its products have been sold in nearly 100 countries and regions. POP MART’s revenue more than doubled last year to 13 billion yuan (US$1.8 billion), and its adjusted net profit surged nearly 186% year on year to 3.4 billion yuan. Sales in China’s Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, together with overseas markets, soared 375% to nearly 5.1 billion yuan. Nan Fang, a Chinese artist based in Paris for over a decade, has witnessed firsthand the rise and success of Chinese designer toys in overseas markets. “POP MART products are far more than merely toys. These items are, in essence, vibrant artworks imbued with life and spirit,” she said. POP MART is not the only company succeeding in the designer toy market. WoFactory, based in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan — widely regarded as China’s toy manufacturing heartland — has also witnessed significant success. WoFactory has so far received orders totaling over 100 million yuan for merchandise based on characters from “Ne Zha 2,” the blockbuster animated sequel to “Ne Zha” that has sparked a nationwide craze for IP derivatives and a surge in demand for Ne Zha-themed merchandise. Following a strong start to the year, WoFactory’s president Sun Wenke expressed confidence that robust sales growth will continue throughout the rest of 2025. Dongguan is home to over 4,000 manufacturers and nearly 1,500 supporting enterprises in the designer toy industry that produce nearly 85% of China’s designer toys and a quarter of global animation-related merchandise. Nationwide, China’s designer toy industry is poised for robust expansion in the coming years. Industrial data show that the size of China’s designer toy market is expected to exceed 110 billion yuan in 2026, nearly doubling from around 60 billion yuan in 2023 and accounting for around 20% of the global designer toy market. Sun Wenkai, also a research fellow at Renmin University of China, believes that an efficient industrial chain, huge domestic demand, decades of production experience, and the rise of Chinese designers who understand cultural diversity are the key drivers behind the rapid development of China’s designer toy industry. Riding the AI wave As China’s technological capabilities expand with the rollout of more AI models, many toy makers are increasingly leveraging AI as a powerful tool to enhance product interactivity and overall appeal. One of the companies riding the wave of AI innovation is Shanghai-based startup FoloToy. Using Chinese AI chips and the popular chatbot DeepSeek, FoloToy has turned fluffy animal-shaped toys into interactive English tutors and daily companions for children, according to Wang Le, the company’s founder and CEO. FoloToy started developing AI-integrated toys in 2023 and sold more than 20,000 units through e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and Amazon in 2024. In the city of Yiwu, a major global trading hub for small commodities located in eastern China’s Zhejiang Province, toy retailers have also seen a surging demand for AI-powered toys. “We’ve designed Arabic-speaking smart dolls for the Middle Eastern market, with about 70% of our recent orders coming from the region,” said Sun Lijuan, owner and designer of a local toy store. Yiwu’s highly efficient industrial chain enables new products to move from concept to production in as little as a day, giving manufacturers a sharp competitive edge. Thanks to mature industrial clusters, intellectual capital, and the push for brand building, China has secured a competitive edge in high-end manufacturing and brand operations, said An Zidong, professor of economics at Renmin University of China. “Driven by structural changes in the labor force, consumer spending changes, and technological progress, China’s manufacturing industry is undergoing a profound transformation toward high-end, brand-oriented, intelligent development,” An added. (Xinhua) Editor’s note While China has long been known as the “factory of the world,” the Made-in-China label is often associated with cheap, low-quality products. However, this perception is changing. Driven by increasing investment in research and development and evolving consumer spending patterns, many Chinese manufacturers are advancing up the value chain and gaining ground in the high-end market. We hereby present a series of stories that examine these changes in the country’s manufacturing sector. The following explores how the toy industry is reinventing itself to go global. | 