We’re reasonably sure if we were to take a straw poll of Shares readers, few would have heard of Chinese toymaker Pop Mart International (9992:HKG), and fewer still would have heard of its signature product, LaBuBu, described by the company as ‘a vibrant collection of designer characters that seamlessly blend playful design with dynamic storytelling’.

Yet thanks to the craze for these diminutive fairytale characters, Pop Mart shares have soared more than 250% this year giving it a market cap of CNR 390 billion ($54 billion) or three times more than the combined value of leading US toymakers Hasbro (HAS:NYSE) and Mattel (MAT:NYSE).

The stock price hit a new all-time high last week after chief executive Wang Ning said the company would beat its annual sales forecast and announced plans for a new mini Labubu doll which customers could hang on their mobile phones.

According to Bloomberg, Wang told analysts on an earnings call on 20 August that due to the global collecting frenzy he couldn’t accurately predict where earnings would be this year, but instead of the official sales target of CNR 20 billion ($2.8 billion) for this year he believed it ‘would be quite easy’ for sales to reach CNR 30 billion ($4.2 billion).

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