Pop Mart and Hirono Summer Round-Up

Every quarter we track every Pop Mart release that lands in our database and break down the numbers: how much dropped and where. This felt like a busy few months for UK collectors, so I thought I would break it down and figure out if it really was as busy as we thought!

Quick Look

In April, May, and June, Pop Mart released well over 100 new products in the UK.

These dropped across its stores, website, TikTok Shop UK channels, and AliExpress official store.

• Approx 40+ drops each month, excluding the additional 65+ Hirono products that dropped as a result of the Hirono Brick Lane store launching on TikTok Shop.
• The Monsters kicked it off in April with the Labubu x FIFA World Cup series and closed it in late June with the Hair Salon series.
• Biggest single day: 3 April, with 20 drops in one day.
• The UK online store can lag behind AliExpress by up to 11 weeks… although some things drop at the same time.
• In between, The Monsters, Hirono, Twinkle Twinkle, Crybaby and SkullPanda all had headline series. But a different IP had the most releases.

The Monsters

I remember that a few of us were shocked when we saw how much was dropping on April 3rd in the UK. It was the day Pop Mart dropped THE MONSTERS x FIFA World Cup 2026 series, Labubu’s first official sports tie in and the marquee drop of the year.

The FIFA collab brought us:

• A brand new electric blue labubu
• A head pendant that doubles up as an earphone bag
• A football shaped mini bag
• The FIFA lanyard, which doubles as a phone charm
• The fridge magnet bottle opener
• And a pendant light, all under the official World Cup licence.

The World Cup kicked off on 11 June, so the early April launch gave the series a two month build-up.

Last week, The Monsters came back with the Hair Salon series: figures and a vinyl plush pendant, plus bags, magnets and charms. So we were suer lucky to get both in the run up to the World Cup, and it looks like Pop Mart is cross promoting from FIFA to the Hair Salon series as the tournament continues.

But on IP dropped even more…

Which IP dropped the most products in the last 3 months?

Keep in mind that I try to track 3-4 different locations that sell official Pop Mart products. They all have different selections of products and release them on different dates, so keeping an accurate list of what dropped where is basically impossible (but I am trying).

That said:

• Hirono was a steady presence across the quarter, finishing strong in June with the Mist-Walker series (this is an AliExpress-only drop in the UK so far).
• Twinkle Twinkle had the dessert themed Moon Gelato series, one of the largest single series dropped with ten products in total.
• Crybaby led the middle of the quarter with the Cry Me an Ocean series on 15 May. My favourite!
• SkullPanda returned on 24 April with Petals in Four Acts, a figure series with matching fridge magnets, earphone case, and Pop Beans.

But the winner here is Molly, with a total of 18 new products tracked on this site. These were a combination of the 20th Anniversary series, the Scenery Along the Way series, new Megas, and the new Molly x Yuqi action figure.

One thing worth flagging: these figures count the number of distinct products in a series. A lot of those drops are boosted by accessories and merch (fridge magnets, pendants, bags and homeware) rather than new figures or plush pendants.

Where Q2 drops landed

I’m a big fan of finding and sharing bargain blind boxes, but I can be tempted to go into a store to buy something on drop day. So I like to track what dropped, but also, where you could actually get it.

Again, I try hard to make this accurate, but as a disclaimer, I am still working on straigtening things out. This is what it looks like:

• Pop Mart on AliExpress was the only place to find nearly half of the new products (61 products were AliExpress only, and the big one is the Hirono Mist-Walker plush pendants, which show no sign of dropping in stores yet).
• UK physical stores got a little under half of new drops. This one is difficult to measure, though. I only count what dropped on its initial release release and where that happened. After a while, products will appear in more stores, so the actual availability will be better after a few weeks.
• The Pop Mart UK website shows about 1 in 5 drops (23%). Again, it is pretty normal for the website (and TikTok live) to lag behind AliExpress and stores. It just depends on the products.

If you want the widest access to new drops, the official Pop Mart store on AliExpress is the best place to look first. If you waited for some of these items to reach stores, you might have had to wait up to 11 weeks for them to catch up.

Hirono Store lands on TikTok

One of the quarter’s bigger moves was not a figure at all. Pop Mart opened a TikTok Shop for the Brick Lane Hirono Store, the brand’s Hirono-only spot on Brick Lane in London.

For the first time, store exclusives that used to mean a trip to London, like the Whisper Within homeware collection (a blanket, a pillow, a fabric vase and some framed artwork), became available online in the UK.

The really big one for collectors was the Freedom Island plush pendant, which had been sold out in the Brick Lane store for months.

This saved me quite a bit (even though I spent money) because I was planning a trip to London to get what I wanted.

I have not counted all of the products because they were dropped offline well before they were sold on TikTok. For collectors outside London, though, it is a real shift, putting more of the Hirono Store’s exclusives within reach without the journey. And, most importantly, they have coupons!

What’s Coming Next?

I’m looking forward to seeing what the Hirono Store stocks next. I feel like the flash sales and coupons we’ve seen have been older stock (although the items are new to most of us), and we are just starting to see brand new drops that have only just come out in the Brick Lane store, like this beautiful lamp.

For Pop Mart more generally, I’m told there’s going to be a good sale on TikTok Shop in July. I will post more about this when I see it.

And just as I posted this, I saw Pop Mart’s Instagram post promising more pop beans!

And I’m still waiting to see if the rumours of a Crybaby Care Bears series come true. As a Care Bear collector (as a kid) and a Crybaby obsessive (as an adult), it would be like coming full circle.