If you grew up in the 80s or 90s, you remember the Cabbage Patch Kid phenomenon. Those doll aisles looked like the toilet paper aisles during COVID, barren, violent, and full of adults questioning their life choices. Lines formed at 4 pm the night before an 8 am release. Parents sprinted, shelves were raided, and employees hid stock in the back like contraband. News anchors reported on it like a global crisis.
I got my first Cabbage Patch Kid on April 24, 1983, my fifth birthday. I remember it partly because I had chicken pox, and the doll was the one bright spot in a week of calamine lotion and cartoons. I don’t remember her name or outfit, but I do remember the saga of my parents hunting her down like she was the last loaf of bread before a blizzard. That was the love story, not the doll, but the effort.
Fast forward to 2025 and here we are again.
Different toy, but the same unhinged energy. Only now I’m an adult, not a kid. Today’s must have toy is the Labubu, a wideeyed, pointy toothed pastel goblin that looks like a Gremlin dressed as an American Girl Doll. They drop in tiny batches and sell out instantly. Adults are up at 2:00 am in Facebook groups negotiating trades like they’re dealing antiques.
When the Labubu craze first hit, before it rolled into Ohio like a pastel tornado, I asked my girls Charli and Andi if they wanted one. Charli said, “Ew those are so ugly.” Until someone else mentioned them and then someone else, and suddenly she needed one immediately.
So naturally while traveling in Asia this summer we stood in line at Pop Mart in Tokyo, because apparently I’m the kind of mother who flies across the world only to spend time in a toy line. They were completely sold out, so we bought other cool toys that had not been released in the US yet, which is how I still ended up needing a Labubu.
Then my best friend’s sister Courtney who was in Tokyo gave me the secret location where she bought some a few weeks prior. After a $20 cab ride across town, Charli and Andi each got a Labubu. Everyone was thrilled, until Charli decided she needed more. For those keeping score, she got zero additional Labubus.
But here’s the truth, my kids aren’t wrong. The obsession feels exactly like it did decades ago. The toy wasn’t the point then, and it’s not the point now. Kids don’t actually need the hottest toy. They need the moments that come with it and the moments that happen even when the toy is nowhere in sight.
Most of us don’t remember the exact doll we had.
We remember the excitement of opening it, the person who stood in line for it, the story behind it. Kids today won’t remember which Labubu was rare or what “Series 18 Pastel Nightmare Edition” meant. But they will remember standing in line with you. They will remember the anticipation, the whining, the excitement, and the circus of it all.
They will remember turning a shoebox into a glitter filled la-bedroom and they will remember you filming an unboxing video while they act like they are opening Wonka’s Golden Ticket.
Honestly, the moments around the toys are already the best part: Charli insisting her Labubu needed her own butler. Andi saying hers needed a new wardrobe. The two of them arguing over which hideous creature was “cuter.” Childhood is not the toy, it’s the chaos, the creativity, the laughter, the memories.
Kids don’t collect toys, they collect moments with their parents.
Ask any adult what they remember. They won’t say, “I loved my doll because it was trendy.” They will say “My dad waited in line at some insane hour because I wanted one,” or “My mom made the doll talk in a ridiculous voice” The toy wasn’t the memory, the moment was.
And right now we get to choose those moments, with or without the tiny pastel goblins because eventually the toy will end up in a bin, donated, or mysteriously relocated (unless you are saving them to sell on ebay in 2045) But the memories, those stick.
We can’t out buy trends, but we can out love them.
So get the Labubu if you can, enjoy the squeal. Film the unboxing video Let the glitter take over. Your kids will outgrow the toy but they won’t outgrow feeling loved by the parent who made their childhood magical.
The hottest toy doesn’t make the magic. You Do.
