Blind boxes are booming in popularity, but there are consequences to buying them.
Blind Boxes are mystery boxes that are sealed and have a random item, and are distributed from a larger series. In the boxes, there are usually toys, trinkets, jewelry and more, according to an article from ABC.
In 2025, the forefront of this surge is Labubus, the monster-like figures created by Pop Mart, according to an article from Wired.
With Labubus being the forefront of their sales in 2025, Pop Mart’s annual revenue was about $5.4 billion, an increase of 185% from the previous year, according to an article from CNBC.
Jeremy Cooper, a Bowling Green State University (BGSU) graduate assistant-teaching associate in Popular Culture, said a mix of psychological reward systems and online trends explains the surge in blind box popularity.
“Blind boxes combine randomized intermittent positive reinforcement, potentially high-value contents tied to good luck, and the rise of social media ‘box break culture,’ where the opening or selling of items that are opened can be ways of the creator earning money,” Cooper said.
‘Box break culture’ is an online trend where people watch or join live streams of sealed trading cards or blind boxes being opened.
Cooper said blind boxes became so popular because they are similar to the logic of gambling.
“There [are] empirical biological and social science studies that show that animals, including human beings, experience heightened attention and pleasure when outcomes have an element of randomness. We can never know which slot pull will win, and in practice, the sunk cost fallacy [irrational urge to keep going to justify past costs] doesn’t feel real,” Cooper said.
Japanese gachapon is a capsule toy vending machine in Japan that has figures and trinkets, and is related to blind boxes.
“Their most direct ancestor is Japanese gachapon, which are like American gumball-type machines that dispense toys. But where the American ones stuck to cheap bulk toys, in Japan, they transitioned to various series of collectible figures [and] toys. So over there, they had an appeal to anyone who wants to be a collector,” Cooper said.
The way companies transport blind boxes to the United States increases their environmental impact.
“A lot of items are made overseas, whether it’s China, Japan or Korea and they’re shipped very long distances on giant boats,” said Zach Hayes, BGSU’s sustainability coordinator. “The impact’s divided amongst the amount of things that are being shipped on these containers, but essentially, I would assume that most of these items are traveling thousands of miles, so you have those carbon emissions associated with transportation.”
With blind boxes, there is an uncertainty and mystery to them, whether you get the item you want or not, but if you don’t want the item, you can give it to someone else.
“I think the best way to go about it would be to try and regift items, let’s say you don’t want half the things you’ve got in your blind box. You can regift those to friends, family, maybe donate them to places like the [BGSU] Campus ReStore or Goodwill. Try not to just waste them,” Hayes said.
Along with not wasting the product, Hayes said not to waste the cardboard and plastic that comes with it.
“Recycling is really important because cardboard is one of the more valuable commodities, and that’s what all the boxes are made of…we have some plastic bag recycling stations. The ones that are accessible to everyone are in the student union, right outside Falcon Outfitters,” Hayes said.
Campus ReStore: The BGSU Campus ReStore
BGSU’s recycling stations: https://www.bgsu.edu/campus-sustainability/recycling-waste-reduction/bgsu-recycling.html
