00:00Hello and welcome, I'm Parithi and I'm currently standing in one of Paris's busiest city centres.
00:05The weather is about, the temperature is about 29 degrees Celsius, it feels more like it's 39.
00:11But we are out here on a unique mission for you.
00:15We're going to go to three LeBouvoo stores in Paris, they're called Popmart stores.
00:19And we're going to try and see whether the trend is really that viral or whether it only exists on social media.
00:26Are the lines actually there? Are people actually queuing up to buy these little figurines?
00:38Each summer, close to 10 million tourists flock to Paris.
00:43This year, many are heading straight to the Popmart stores to buy LeBouvoo's but also other figurines offered by the Chinese toy company.
00:54We just got in today.
00:56So, of course, we came right to Popmart.
00:58Well, we've been to other countries where they've had a store and we went into those because we really like the figurines.
01:06We have never tried where there is a queue, so it's a little bit more crazy.
01:11The other times, we were not the only ones, but there were not as many people at all.
01:18The virality online stems partly from their marketing strategy,
01:21but also from celebrities adoring the LeBouvoo keychain.
01:26From Hollywood to Bollywood, and even influencers, the craze is overwhelming.
01:33First inside the store at Châtelet-Lezhal, the wait time to enter was not too long,
01:38but the queue seemed to exist regardless.
01:40Some say it is a strategy that Popmart uses to attract more customers.
01:47Whether it does or not, it seems to work nonetheless.
01:51We tokenize LeBouvoo's.
01:54We got on the trend months ago because we're a collectibles-based platform,
01:59and so we see things before they hit the mainstream.
02:02One of the biggest in Paris, the store has the LeBouvoo figurines, but the keychains are out of stock.
02:24Just like at Opera and the vending machines we visited.
02:28They've been taken off the shelves in countries such as the UK, due to a skewed supply-demand ratio.
02:36At Opera, the queue situation is the same, with people standing despite the heat.
02:42Some are devoted to LeBouvoo.
02:44But others, well, not so much.
03:08Well, at the start, I thought that it was fun.
03:12It was just another internet trend, where they thought that this little keychain was really cute,
03:18and then it went wild all of a sudden, and people were going crazy for it,
03:22like scalpers were taking to resell them online, and I thought it was maybe going a bit too far.
03:28Yeah.
03:29Yeah.
03:29Do you own one?
03:30Do you own one of your products?
03:31No, I don't.
03:32I also don't.
03:34I think they're cute, but not for me.
03:36They're all the cute mystery figurines I would rather have.
03:41Do you own any, like, popcorn figurines?
03:43I own a couple.
03:44As I said before, we've been to some of the other ones, and I really like them.
03:50The toy was created by Kaseem Lung, an artist from Hong Kong,
03:54and has captured the attention of old and young alike.
03:58It brings back a childlike curiosity in those that buy it,
04:02like this customer who opened it at the train station.
04:06PopMod's revenue has surged by seven times,
04:10to reach $1.8 billion in 2024,
04:14compared to just $242 million in 2019.
04:19Well, the craze is here.
04:22Will it stay or will it go?
04:24Do you have a Laboobu yet?
04:26Or would you like to buy one?
04:28Let us know in the comments below.
04:30I'm going to take you to the first one at Shatley.
04:39It's actually right behind me.
04:40We're going to go there first.
04:41Then I'm going to take you to a store in Opera.
04:44And a third one is a unique vending machine that has been put up
04:47at one of Paris' busiest stations called Gardelion.
04:50So, let's go and let's see what this trend is really like offline.
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