Our Fads, Ourselves

Though the character known as Labubu has been around for a decade, the toy version—around six inches tall, sporting bunny ears and a demonic grin—is only just becoming a must-have accessory. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz join the trend and unbox their very own Labubu before diving into the history of such fads. They draw a distinction between collecting and speculating, from the seventeenth-century Dutch tulip mania through to the eBay-fuelled Beanie Baby craze of the nineteen-nineties and the far more recent rise and fall of non-fungible tokens. And they attempt to understand why this slightly unsettling children’s toy is now inspiring such intense reactions. “People were flooding my D.M.s, like, ‘This thing is the end of culture,’ ” Schwartz says. “This thing is not the end of culture. It’s a point on a line.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The Monsters,” by Kasing Lung
“Where the Wild Things Are,” by Maurice Sendak
“What the Labubu Obsession Says About Us,” by Jia Tolentino (The New Yorker)
“A Dubai Chocolate Theory of the Internet” (“Search Engine”)
“IRL Brain Rot and the Lure of the Labubu,” by Kyle Chayka (The New Yorker)
“Little House on the Prairie,” by Laura Ingalls Wilder
“Toy Story” (1995)

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Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker that explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.

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