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I'm Ed Zitron, and this is Better Offline.

Yes. Today I'm joined by an incredible duo.

We've got Miasato of the Verge and Dave Lee of Bloomberg.

Thank you both for joining me in the studio.

Happy to be here.

So before we go any further, of course, please subscribe to the newsletter, the premium one as well. Please help me. And for a limited time, you can buy a better offline challenge coin and a bunch of other stuff links in the episode notes. But you two, I'm so excited to have you here because you were two of my favorite opinion columnists as well, but also feature, like you've known your work for many years, so I'm very, very excited to have you here. Mia, I wanted to start with a simple question, though. What is a Laboooooo? You've shown me this creature, this horrifying, like, little evil thing, and everyone wants one, and I don't, every time I try and look it up, it makes me upset. This could be the first time a Labibu has stepped foot in the IHeart radio offices. I think we record in the same room as Last Culturis. Oh, okay. So Labibu probably has been in the Last Culturis area. Okay, okay. Yeah, I would assume. Yeah, Labubu's are little plush dolls. They have kind of like a hard plastic, human like mean face, but then are wearing like a bunny suit. They come in all different colors. And I think the most important thing to know about Labuboos is it is just gambling. It's just gambling for kids and kind of adults now. Elaborate. So they come in blind boxes, which is like they are all in like a little plastic or a paper carton and you have like a one in six chance of getting a certain, you know, these colors. And then there's one rare one that's like a one in 72 chance.

And it says it right on the box.

Like it is just straightforward betting. Who makes them? They are sold by this company called Pop Mart and they're based on like a cartoon, I think, like a broader umbrella called The Monsters. So Laboubu is one character in the Monsters. And the others did not take off, I'm guessing. Not the same way, but I think there are some fans for the other characters.

Is the Laboubu on your back? The Labubu is looking at us. No, it's real. It's real. Is it one of the 72? Oh, no, no, no, obviously not. So, you can't, is there a secondary Labubu market? Well, this is where it gets interesting. and this is why I think Labubuos are funnier and kind of

stupider than they appear on the surface. Because from my observations and from talking to friends

who are like good at flipping things, there is no, really no resale value for opened Labuboos.

So if I wanted to sell this pink Laboooo, it would go for maybe like

40 bucks, 50 bucks. And they retail for like 2799, not including shipping and tax and all of that.

So not a huge margin. No, not at all. Assuming you can even sell. Exactly. The ones that do go for

some money are the rare ones, which is like, you know, they're special colors and unopened boxes. Because again, it's about gambling. It is about the chance that you might have a rare one. Do they sell out? Is that why? They're all sold out on Pop Mart's app, which we can talk about. Like, I think it is like the funniest thing ever to do to parents of young children and to teens to like make this app.

But I mean, I feel like this is my life with Pokemon cards.

Yes, it's exactly the same.

It's a sort of game with Pokemon.

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