The Economist.
Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist.
I'm Jason Palmer.
And I'm Rosie Blau, every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.
First up, though.
Last week I dropped in on the flagship store of Pop Mart.
Don Weinland is our China business and finance editor.
It's in this really central location in downtown Shanghai.
When you get inside, it's like the interior of a cartoon spaceship, and it's packed with people.
Everyone is there trying to get their hands on a la boo boo doll.
These weird, smiling, elvish-looking creatures that come in what's called blind boxes.
So when you buy one, you don't really know what you're gonna get when you by it.
They're as cheap as $20, but they can also sell for crazy amounts.
One was just sold for $150,000 US dollars in an auction.
I tried to get one.
Yeah, there's none here.
And of course the answer was no. I was told to scan a QR code and get into like a digital line.
Maybe in a week or so I'd be notified that a la boo boo had arrived and I could pick it up.
Pop Mart is really interesting because it's a company like Disney or Sanrio, the creator of Hello Kitty.
And we don't really see a lot of these types of creative companies coming out of China.