A police raid in London has uncovered thousands of fake Labubu dolls, exposing a booming trade in dangerous counterfeits fueled by a viral TikTok trend.
The dolls, made famous by Chinese company Pop Mart, have become so popular across social media that both children and adults are desperate to buy them. Pop Mart’s Labubu craze has helped the company double its revenue to over £1.3 billion last year, but it has also created an opening for criminals.
UK authorities, acting on tips from a raid at a shop in Swansea, tracked the fake dolls back to a maze of storage rooms in an industrial estate outside London. Trading Standards officers estimate that millions of pounds worth of counterfeit toys, mostly Labubus, were waiting to be shipped to customers across the UK.
Experts say these fakes are not just cheap imitations, they’re unsafe. “The head comes off. The feet will pull off,” explained Rhys Harries of Trading Standards. “All these parts fit inside a child’s throat. That’s a choking hazard.”
Some parents turn to fakes because getting an original Labubu can take hours of queuing or cost over £80, while counterfeits often go for just £10. Jade, a mother from Caerphilly, bought knock-offs for her six-year-old son, Harri. She says the toys fell apart within hours. “Luckily my son was old enough to tell me, but it would be really dangerous for smaller kids.”
Officials warn that many fake Labubus are sloppily made, with loose eyes, poorly glued parts and sometimes even toxic plastics or chemical residues. “Counterfeiting is the second biggest source of criminal income worldwide, after drug trafficking,” said Kate Caffery of the UK Intellectual Property Office. She added that the materials used in fakes “could be anything”, posing health and safety risks.
Many of the counterfeits trace back to factories in China, Hong Kong and Turkey. Investigators say buyers should watch for suspiciously low prices and obvious errors in packaging, which often means a toy is not genuine.
Labubu collector and TikToker Meg Goldberger said demand for authentic dolls is so high that resellers and even automated bots snap up the originals as soon as they’re released, forcing most fans to turn to the booming secondhand market, where fakes flourish.
Authorities will use the seized toys as evidence, with the rest set to be destroyed. Pop Mart has not yet commented on the surge in counterfeits.
The crackdown serves as a warning. The next time you see that cute Labubu on TikTok, make sure you know where it’s really coming from. Counterfeit toys may look fun, but the hidden risks are nothing to play with.
