Dolls are no longer exclusively for children. Jiang Fan, a 22-year-old college graduate in Shanghai, became captivated by Molly dolls two years ago. Now, she has a collection of more than 70, and the number is climbing.
These tiny toys, commonly known as blind box figures, come in sealed packaging and collectors have no idea which specific figure from a series they are buying. Many series even feature rare special figures or lucky-draw figures.
Molly dolls are little dolls with curly yellow hair, big turquoise eyes and pouting lips. Each one costs 59 Yuan (USD8.5), which means Jiang has to pay at least 708 Yuan for an entire series of 12 figures.
The sponsor of the toy expo is Pop Mart, a leading designer toy company in China. Founded in 2010, the company sells eight categories of lifestyle commodities. But it put an emphasis on designer toys in 2017, after the company detected the enormous potential of the new market and launched Molly, due to the global popularity of Sonny Angel, another famous designer toy brand.
The company sold about 4 million Molly dolls in 2018 and expects to replicate the sales volume this year, Wang Ning, founder of Pop Mart, said in a speech at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in April.
"What makes IP successful? I think it's time," said Wang. "With a faster pace of life and fragmented time, we can't afford to hatch a popular product. But a Molly player doesn't have to spend weeks watching a TV series. Basically, displaying the dolls on a desk is enough."
Change in value is the other main factor, according to Wang.
"People used to reach consensus on the preference of figures; however, today, everyone's favorite figure is different," he said.
In fact, the thriving designer toy in a blind box epitomizes the entire toy market for adults. More and more youngsters across the world are changing their tastes and taking up collecting designer toys and model toys. According to the 2019 Global Toy Market Report made by the US Toy Association, customers aged from 18 to 34 make up half of the people in the United States who buy toys for themselves.
In China, the performance of toys for adults is also remarkable. Statistics from China Customs indicate that the import volume of components of model toys increased by 49.8 percent year-on-year in 2017, and the turnover soared by 95.6 percent during the same period.
Source: China Daily
