🧸 Plush money

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👋 Happy Monday, and a reminder to know your worth this week. Take, for example, Pope Leo’s 750-square-foot childhood home in Dolton, Illinois, which had been listed for less than $250k just days before he became the first pope from the US. Hours after the conclave elected the new pope, the owner delisted the home, which was purchased in 2024 for $66k, and relisted it for the private auction of “a piece of papal history.”

🎧 On the pod: Companies are rolling out RTO mandates, but are they working? We discuss with Darian Woods of NPR’s The Indicator podcast.

NEWS FLASH

💊 Spotify removed 200 fake podcasts advertising the sale of opioids and other prescription drugs following a Business Insider investigation. The podcasts directed listeners to websites imitating legitimate online pharmacies, and many of the episodes — which were under a minute long — were devoid of content other than pushing listeners to buy controlled substances. Spotify, which doesn’t allow content that promotes the sale of illegal or regulated drugs on its platform, yanked the podcasts.

🧬 A big medical milestone for a little patient: A nine-month-old baby, born with a rare disorder affecting one in 1.3m babies, became the first person to receive a custom gene-editing treatment to fix a single mutation in his genome. CRISPR tech crawls along a strand of DNA to find the exact letter that needs to be changed — a breakthrough treatment for the 30m+ people in the US who have one of 7k+ rare genetic diseases.

🤖 Is AI a boon for productivity? Don’t ask MIT: The elite university has disowned a popular research paper penned by one of its doctoral students due to concerns over its “integrity.” The paper, which cites successful AI adoption at an MIT material sciences lab, was circulated far and wide for its suggestion that AI could wildly boost worker productivity — until the university stepped in and said actually, nope, no thank you. MIT has nixed its publication and says the paper should be “withdrawn from public discourse,” so, uh, forget this ever happened?

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

Charter Communications and Cox Communications have agreed to a merger that values the latter at $34.5B. If approved, the new company would be one of America’s biggest TV and internet providers, and stand a better chance competing with the likes of Comcast and Verizon.

Rite Aid, which recently filed for bankruptcy, sold its pharmacy assets across 1k+ locations to rivals including Walgreens, CVS Pharmacy, Albertsons, and Kroger. Rite Aid CEO Matt Schroeder said the sale will ensure a “smooth transition” for customers “while preserving jobs for some of our valued team members.”

Epic Games and Apple are still battling it out over App Store policies and commissions on in-app purchases. The gaming company submitted a new court filing asking a judge to require that Apple “accept any compliant version of Fortnite onto the US storefront of the App Store.”

SOCIAL SECRETS

Approach social media like the pros

You sitting down? You better be.

Because this deserves some quality attention. If you’re busy planting seeds to sprout on socials, open this Social Media Vault for:

The master guide to growing on all the platforms
Expert tips for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and more
A social media content calendar and strategy sheet

Grab the pack and never look back.

Social media, simplified

THE BIG IDEA

The booming business behind these viral plush dolls didn't come to play

If you’ve noticed a plush doll with a bunch of teeth and a mischievous grin hanging off a fashionista's purse recently, then you’ve likely spotted a Labubu.

A La… what, now?

Created in 2015 by Hong Kong artist Kasing Lung, the dolls began as children’s book characters before a deal with Beijing-based toy company Pop Mart turned them into a line of figurines in 2023.

While each figure costs ~$30 (with limited-edition models costing more), Pop Mart’s business is the furthest thing from child’s play, per The New York Times:

The company’s revenue more than doubled to $1.8B in 2024.
Labubu dolls and related products brought in $400m in revenue in 2024, a 726% increase from 2023.
Pop Mart had 21 US stores by the end of 2024, and plans to expand to 40 by the end of 2025.

Now, Pop Mart’s market cap has grown to $34B — more than Hello Kitty maker Sanrio, Hasbro, and Mattel combined.

Not toying around

Behind the trend, of course, are toy-loving kidults with disposable income.

And Labubu uses some powerful brand strategies to keep those spenders coming back for more.

It releases new items on Thursdays — the site sees a 54% increase in traffic, on average, on this day, according to Similarweb.
It uses blind box packaging for many products, meaning customers don’t know what item they’ve purchased until they open the box.

That’s fed a social media frenzy, and the hashtag #labubu has been used 1m+ times on TikTok.

Plus, cottage industries have emerged to cater to Labubu enthusiasts, with tiny outfits, car seats, and mini handbags for the toys being sold on Etsy and AliExpress.

And, of course, where there’s scarcity, there’s a thriving — and expensive — resale market.

While the company maintains that it will try to keep prices accessible regardless of ever-changing tariff policies with China, and is diversifying its supply chain by expanding into Vietnam, it did raise prices on its April 25 keychain figure drop by $6 a piece.

So now you don’t just have to worry about your parents asking you why the hell you have stuffed animals hanging off your bag, but also about your budget. Great.

🔗

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

How much Harvard paid for a copy of the Magna Carta in 1946 — so, $452.99 today.

But David Carpenter, professor of medieval history at King’s College London, spotted the document in the Harvard Law School Library’s archives in 2023 and thought it might be an official copy. Turns out, it’s actually one of a handful of copies issued by Britain's King Edward I in 1300, but had been dated incorrectly.

Harvard does not intend to sell it, but it’s worth millions. For reference, a 1297 copy sold at auction for $21.3m in 2007.

AROUND THE WEB

🎂 On this day: In 1962, Marilyn Monroe famously sang “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy in a sequined gown auctioned for $4.8m in 2016.

🚂 That’s cool: The long-lost 1983 pilot of “Thomas & Friends” is now online.

💡 Opportunity: This June, Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman’s Boardroom will launch Members Club, a community offering monthly events with industry leaders. Apply here.

🚗 Haha: Go on a virtual road trip using Google Maps. Join other internet passengers and vote on which way to go.

🐱 Aww: Serious eye contact.

QUOTE OF NOTE

What they lack in technical, they make up for in the heart.

Tech millionaires, taking a page out of Mark Zuckerberg’s book, are getting into fighting. And thanks to Influencer Fight Club — an amateur MMA competition geared toward tech guys that launched last year — their “masculine energy” dreams are coming true, per The New York Times.

They just don't look as cool as they imagine: Tech entrepreneur Andrew Batey spent $75k and four months on training for a televised IFC fight that, despite the investment and one commentator’s gentler take, NYT said resembled a “schoolyard scrap.”

SHOWER THOUGHT

People who have never owned a dog have had to pick up every piece of food they've dropped in their home. SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman, with help from Singdhi Sokpo.
Editing by: Ben “Will never buy a Labubu” Berkley.

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