Pop Mart sneak peek: Crybaby, cute finds, and celeb confessions
Hurry before Jed and Marian get everything,” Martin Nievera joked as we made our way inside Pop Mart’s new pop-up at the third-floor concourse of SM Makati.
Good news for Pop Mart fans—the short wait is over. Two weeks after the very successful SM Mall of Asia (MOA) pop-up closed on Jan. 27, another pop-up is here to bring joy to Labubu lovers and blind box collectors.
“At the first pop-up, we had Hirono fronting the store. This time around, Crybaby is our theme. We’ve got the latest Crybaby series, Crying for Love … It’s the perfect Valentine’s Day gift,” Jeremy Lee, Pop Mart Southeast Asia director, told Lifestyle.
Pop Mart opened yesterday, right in time for the season of hearts. Until today, only those who prebooked a spot can shop at the pop-up. “We can accommodate 740 customers per day and they get 20 minutes to shop,” said Mishen Samonte, Pop Mart Philippines’ head of marketing.
Starting tomorrow, walk-ins will be accepted. Just be ready to queue.
New location
Lee said that SM Makati “is the perfect place for us to be.” “When we said we were going to open a pop-up in SM Makati, office workers went crazy. The comment was ‘I can finally go down and buy something from Pop Mart during my lunch break,” he said, laughing.
Celebrity fashion stylist Myrrh Lao To was happy about the new location. “Closer to home and way more accessible for everyone,” he said.
He just started collecting last year, he said. “As a newbie Hirono, Hacipupu, and Skullpanda collector, seeing the pop-up fully stocked is pure joy and gives me hope for pulling those secret figs. Also patiently waiting for Tinytiny to drop—I can’t wait!”
“SM Makati is honored to be the home of Pop Mart for the next three months. As always, the SM Store has it all for the Filipino market,” said Dhinno Tiu, SM Store executive vice president.
More and more Filipinos have become obsessed with Pop Mart, thanks in big part to last year’s Labubu craze. But it’s not just Labubu anymore that’s getting a lot of love. Hirono and Molly are also a big hit.
“I would say that Crybaby is also getting more and more popular,” said Lee. “People relate and connect to it. We all feel loneliness, we have times when we feel sad, and I think we can really relate to the emotion. You just gotta let it out sometimes and then you’re fine.”
Actress Marian Rivera, a huge Pop Mart fan with an impressive collection, showed us the Crybaby Crying For Love Love You Cherry Much vinyl plush hanging card that was dangling from her bag—two adorable Crybabies on a green ribbon cherry stem. “Sobrang cute,” she said.
She was also eyeing the other new Crybaby plush pendants that were available at the pop-up.
“Yung hinahanap kong Hirono, ayun o,” she said, thrilled to find a piece she had been looking for: the Hirono Ceramic Feather Figure.
Don’t ask her who her no. 1 Pop Mart character is. “It’s hard to choose because they all have their own charm,” said Rivera, who also loves Skullpanda and Molly. “Kung ano talaga yung nag-spark sa akin, yun talaga yung binibili ko.”
Bigger pieces
She started with the small Pop Mart figures but soon felt like she should level up to collecting the bigger pieces. “Now, my problem is how to make sure they all fit in my house,” she said, confessing that she just rearranged her collection.
Another piece she was planning to get at the pop-up? The very rare, very cute pink Angry Molly Love on Fire edition.
Actress Nadine Samonte had her eye on the same piece. “I have the red Angry Molly from China, and it’s signed [by Molly creator/artist Kenny Wong],” she told us excitedly, whipping out her phone to show us a video of her unboxing. “I just haven’t posted it yet pero sobrang kinilig talaga ako.”
Samonte loves big Pop Mart figures. “I have the 400- and 1,000-percent ones. I display them all over my house. They’re so nice, they’re so colorful, they bring happy vibes.”
She’s also planning to get the Labubu Let’s Checkmate vinyl plush doll with the crown and cape and the smaller Labubu Let’s Checkmate yellow plush hanging card with the pink heart that were released for Valentine’s.
“Are you into Pop Mart, too?” we asked Nievera, who was hanging out by the Mega Space Mollys.
“I am into Pop Mart,” the singer said proudly. “I’ve been to every Pop Mart. You name it. I even went to—ready?—Amsterdam.”
He was influenced by his girlfriend Anj Del Rosario. “My girlfriend’s into it, all of her friends are into it, and I had to get into it.”
Nievera told Lifestyle, “Most men don’t collect anything except dirty underwear… In my case, when I saw her getting all these things, I was like, ‘Why are you spending all your money on this stuff?’”
But then he opened his first blind box. “And I said, ‘Oh my god, this is… Aww.’ Endless ‘aww, aww, aww…’ Oh my god, it’s adorable.”
What used to be his trophy room (with three trophies, he joked), a place where he also kept sports memorabilia, has been taken over by Pop Mart. “It’s now my mini Pop Mart.”
He and Del Rosario have also visited Pop Mart stores in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Japan. “Everywhere we go. Sometimes we go to that place just because there’s a Pop Mart. She has a Pop Mart passport and when you go to different Pop Mart stores, they stamp it.”
Like his girlfriend, he also loves Skullpanda. “Whatever she’s into, I’m into,” he said.
But he feels a real connection with Labubu. “I love Labubu, I think it says a lot about me personally—the smiling through any kind of situation. If I’m happy or sad, I have to smile, if I’m going through something, onstage, the show must go on. I’ve got that Labubu smile. Kahit anong nangyari sa buhay ko itutuloy ko yung show. Labubu has that look that I think every artist, clown, performer, singer has to have. It’s a personal thing for me. But I don’t have the ears,” he said.
He has a Labubu charm on his bag that he carries with him every day. It was given to him by singer Jed Madela, he shared. Madela is also a huge collector, not just of Pop Mart but of a lot of other art toys and toys.
“There’s no cure for Jed,” Nievera joked.
Long list
Madela was, of course, at the preview and he was wearing a Hirono shirt. “Every time I go to Pop Mart it’s always exciting because I get to see new stuff and it’s so nice that whenever I pass through an aisle, I’m like, ‘I have this, I have this, I have this…’ It’s an achievement. There’s a certain high when it comes to these toys.”
The pop-up gave him a long list of new things to add to his collection: “the 400 percent Mega Space Molly Smitten Love, the 400 percent Mega Space Molly X Care Bears Sweet Dreams Bear, the Labubu Let’s Checkmate plush doll, Angry Molly Love on Fire and the Hacipupu Snuggle With You Series—adorable little figures dressed in fuzzy animal costumes. “I took a photo of everything I want,” he said.
Like Rivera, don’t ask Madela to pick a favorite character. “It’s so difficult to choose. Molly, Labubu, Skullpanda… it depends on my mood. It’s like asking a singer what’s your favorite song.”
At the preview, two guys—DJ Perez and Wisely Lo—caught our attention because of the plush pendants hanging from their beautiful Thom Browne and Hermes bags. Perez said, “It brings back our childhood… It’s liberating, wanting something and now that we’re adults, we can actually buy it for ourselves and not asking our parents to buy it and crying about it.”
Perez loves the excitement of unboxing. “It’s the addiction from opening each box and hoping to get what you want.”
Like many others, he started with Labubu. “Now it’s going to Crybaby and Skullpanda… It’s never-ending. That’s what I’m scared of.
Lo said, “I fell in love with Labubu. I love collecting these toys—to me, they’re art. I also love Hacipupu.”
Lo showed us the secret edition Astrological Angel from The Constellation Hacipupu series that was dangling from his Birkin. “This is my favorite. For me, Hacipupu is my guardian angel.”
Permanent stores
The SM Makati pop-up is just one of the exciting things Pop Mart has in store for Filipino fans in 2025. “In the second half of this year, that’s when all the Pop Mart stores will come,” said Lee.
Wait, we paused. All? Meaning, more than one? He laughed. “Not just one. We’ve got a few. I can’t reveal all the details at this point but yeah, there’s gonna be a few. We really want to make sure that we’re accessible. We know traffic in Manila and we don’t want you to be traveling two hours just to get to your Pop Mart store. We’re gonna make it as available as possible to you so watch out for us.”
At the permanent Pop Mart stores, collectors will get the full experience, Lee said. “We really put our heart and mind into merchandising and designing. Every store is like a baby… we give it the best we can. There will be more space so you’ll get a fuller assortment of products. You’re going to be seeing merchandise that you’ve not seen before. The promise to all the fans of Pop Mart is we’ll continue to innovate, bring more new IPs, bring new products, more product categories.”
That will come soon enough—but for now, enjoy the pop-up. “I’m very excited to see how we have to built a community of Pop Mart collectors here in the Philippines,” Lee said.
And for anyone buying blind boxes for their Valentine, remember this cautionary tale that Lee shared: “There was a guy who wanted to impress his girlfriend by buying an entire blind box set. But you know what he did before he gave it to her? He opened every single box and gave her the opened boxes. She was so mad, she said, ‘You robbed me of the joy of opening.’ A little tip for everyone: Don’t open the box. Don’t ruin the surprise for anybody.”
Pop Mart will be at SM Makati until April 30.
