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$7K of Labubu toys stolen

Shelf of Labubu toys
Labubu FILE PHOTO: Labubu collectible toy from The Monsters by Pop Mart on display with surprise boxes. A California store had thousands of dollars' worth of Labubu toys stolen. (Ekaterina Elagina - stock.adobe.com)

Thousands of dollars’ worth of the must-have Labubu toys have been stolen from a California store, known for having the viral collectables.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said that burglars took dozens of boxes of Labubu toys from One Stop Sales in La Puente, California, ABC News reported. The break-in happened at 1:29 a.m. on Aug. 6.

“We worked so hard to get to this point, [only] for them just to come in and like nothing take it all away,” the store’s co-owner, Joanna Avendano, told KABC.

Avendano revised the estimate of the value of all of the stolen items — Labubus and other items — to $25,000. The sheriff’s department was able to return about $4,000 worth of items, The New York Times reported.

The car that was used in the heist was recovered, but the alleged burglars have not, The Associated Press reported.

Labubu toys were created by artist Kasing Lung but took about a decade to go viral, according to the AP. Celebrities such as Rihanna, Lizzo and BLACKPINK’s Lisa have made them popular, ABC News reported.

The “fuzzy Nordic elves” come in blind boxes, so buyers don’t know which Labubu you are getting, The New York Times reported.

“[It’s a] system essentially where you don’t know what’s in the box, you hope that what’s in the box is what you want,” Northeastern University School of Business marketing professor Alex DePaoli told "Good Morning America." “If you don’t get what you want, you’ve got to go buy another one. A lot of folks have sort of likened that sort-of system to almost gambling.”

They typically retail for $30 if you can get one, but the secondary market has them costing thousands of dollars. There are more than 300 versions of Labubus.

The New York Times called Labubus “this generation’s version of Cabbage Patch dolls.”

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