WE were living in Beijing in 1983 when our family visited us from San Francisco bearing Cabbage Patch dolls as gifts. We hadn’t heard about these soft big-eyed dolls — it’s hard to explain just how cut off from the world we were back then — but I have a clear memory of my chacha explaining the craze for them in the US.

In the 2023 documentary about these dolls, I learned that parents drove miles to buy them for their children, stood in long queues and even fought with other customers. The New York government issued a complaint against the brand that made the dolls for making too few to meet the demand. The toys set new sales records for three years and probably set in motion a frenzy for the latest toys, video games, make-up, clothes — remember the lines for lawn jora exhibitions in the early 2000s?

Perhaps we were witnessing the beginning of the scarcity mindset with the Cabbage Patch dolls — the less the product, the more the desire for it. We’ve all experienced a desire for something in our childhood and heard our parents say ‘you can’t have it’, or getting it as a reward for good grades. Today, I see the desire has been replaced with a sense of entitlement; ie, ‘I deserve the hottest thing being sold on the internet’. Everything is about instant gratification. And then instant discarding.

I wrote about the craze for certain water bottles reaching Pakistan. When you juxtapose this against us being forced to buy water, it becomes all rather absurd.

The Labubu doll is the worst face of overconsumption.

The absurdity brings me to the Labubu doll, an odd-looking small plush toy with a snaggle tooth smile. It has become a global sensation. I saw them dangling off designer bags at a mall in Dubai last week, and then went down a rabbit hole to understand why people wanted these “sweet but sinister” dolls. South China Morning Post described the frenzy as part of a trend of toys for the “kidult” sector, which is rising as buyers are “driven by nostalgia, comfort-seeking and collectability”. It also “represents a growing intersection between play and finance” and there is a resale market for them. Their scarcity creates value, the paper wrote. “Their emotional resonance creates demand.”

The doll, which was first created in 2015, retails for $20, but due to its popularity, can sell for 10 times more. It gained popularity in 2019, when toy retailer Pop Mart began releasing them as blind-box collectables; you did not know what you were getting, adding, I suppose, to an insatiable desire for more.

The Labubu doll is the worst face of overconsumption. It will likely end up in a landfill where all trends go to die. Or rather, it will kill the planet in the process of its decay. The Cabbage Patch dolls represented a new era of economic prosperity — parents had more money to spend on their children. Toys represented a new kind of social currency.

The Labubu doll certainly represents a good moment for China, which, as CNN wrote, “is a glimpse of how [its] long-awaited soft power is beginning to take shape in unexpected ways”. The unexpected came in the form of TikTok influencers and celebrity endorsements for Labubu. While reading up on this strange-looking doll, I found myself in an equally bizarre world of beauty influencers who showcase thousands of dollars of spending on make-up and skincare. I’m talking about buying dozens of blushes in one go, and shelves and cupboards filled with products to bathe an army with.

When does an obsession go too far?

China may be pushing a ‘cool product’ but when did we become such mindless consumers, ie, ‘sheeple’? Do we need to look the same? In Dubai, I saw women in baggy jeans and black cropped tops everywhere. On my flight home, almost all women were in floral coordinated sets.

Who benefits from this herd mentality? Popularity, as I always teach in class, does not mean good. I’m usually referring to TV ratings, but I’ll now extend it to leadership, which enjoys mass following and rarely allows for questioning.

I’m worried about this moment — the economic crisis which widens the disparity between the haves and have-nots, the constant anxiety around war and conflict, the water crisis in Karachi, etc. It’s easy to lose yourself to online shopping or social media, which are selling you products. It is the only place you find your dopamine rush, because the outdoors is not pleasant.

Once upon a time, you were cool if you didn’t fit in. That is not the case today. Capitalism “with a fuzzy face” wants your hard-earned rupees, and maybe we should pause and find other ways to get our dopamine rush.

The writer is an instructor of journalism.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2025