IP Character Universe

Owning the cast

An IP character universe is a strategy in which a company builds a stable of original characters it owns outright, rather than depending on a single hero property or licensing someone else's. Each character carries its own aesthetic, backstory, and target audience, and the portfolio as a whole is designed so that the fortunes of the brand do not rise or fall with any one figure. Pop Mart is the clearest scaled example, having grown from a single breakout character into a roster spanning very different tastes.¹

The problem it solves

A single hit character is a single point of failure. When Pop Mart's early success rested on one character, the open question was whether the company was a one-hit story.¹ The answer was diversification along several axes at once. Characters differ in aesthetic register, from cute to edgy to mythological. They differ in demographic target, reaching children, young women, streetwear-minded adults, and older collectors. And they differ in cultural fit, so that a lineup naturally contains at least one character likely to land in a given market. Pop Mart's roster came to include Molly, licensed from Hong Kong artist Kenny Wong in 2016, alongside Dimoo, Skullpanda, and the Nordic-folklore monster Labubu from artist Kasing Lung's Monsters series.¹

Why the portfolio is defensible

Several properties make an owned character universe hard to copy. No single character can take down the brand, because when one trend cools another is often rising, which gives the company resilience that a single-IP business lacks. Geographic reach comes without re-skinning the product, because different characters from the same lineup self-sort into different markets rather than requiring a bespoke product per region. Each new character launch doubles as a marketing event for the collector community, generating attention without paid acquisition. And owning the intellectual property, instead of licensing it, means the characters are revenue-generating assets rather than rented ones exposed to renewal risk and margin pressure.¹

The Labubu case shows both the upside and the volatility of the model. After going viral in 2024, the Monsters line accounted for roughly a third of Pop Mart revenue in the first half of 2025, a concentration that demonstrates how large one character can become and also why the surrounding portfolio matters as ballast.²

The artist and platform layers

Pop Mart extends the universe through collaborations with outside artists, which add aesthetic vocabulary the in-house roster might not produce and lend prestige in specific markets. The collaboration model widens the universe without diluting the owned core. The strategy also points toward a longer arc, where characters move beyond physical figures into entertainment, games, theme parks, and accessories, treating the collectible as a beachhead and the character as the durable asset. That progression mirrors how earlier character-driven companies extended a single recognizable cast across many formats.¹

Relationship to the surrounding mechanics

The character universe is interdependent with the other parts of the Pop Mart model. More characters mean more variants to chase within each series and more full sets to complete across the roster, which deepens the pull described in blind box psychology. A wider cast also gives the collector economy more distinct objects to price and trade. And repeated exposure to a character through the buying and unboxing ritual builds the emotional familiarity examined in brand as familiarity priming, which is part of what keeps collectors attached even as individual trends rotate.