South Park tackles Labubu craze as Butters gets caught up in K-pop’s ugliest-cute obsession

South Park has never missed a chance to turn a cultural fad into a grotesque mirror, and Season 27’s fourth episode plants its target squarely on Labubu. What began as a cult collectible by Hong Kong illustrator Kasing Lung, turbo-charged into a global craze by K-pop idols and TikTok feeds, becomes in Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s hands a demonic rabbit-doll apocalypse at South Park Elementary.

The episode drags Butters Stotch into the chaos, sending him through overpriced pop-up shops, arcade claw machines, and even Fox News conspiracy theories, all orbiting a plush toy that is as “ugly-cute” as it is absurdly expensive.

Labubu craze strikes South Park Elementary

The episode wastes no time in exaggerating the mania. At school, the kids treat Labubus not as toys but as sacred idols. Girls gather in secret circles, drawing pentagrams on the floor and vomiting chicken blood over their dolls to “bring them to life,” while classmates fistfight in the hallway over who has the authentic version.

The ritualized obsession is both grotesque and familiar, a satirical echo of how real-life collectors will camp out overnight or battle through resale markets for the latest blind-box release.

Butters, always the hapless innocent, just wants to score a rare Labubu for a birthday gift, only to find himself in the jaws of an $85-per-box fad inflated by tariffs and playground status wars.

Devotion and cult rituals

South Park pushes the kids’ obsession to a fever pitch by framing it as literal devil worship. Every new rare Labubu is welcomed with an occult initiation: candles flicker, pentagrams glow on classroom floors, and children gag up chicken blood onto their dolls as if this is the only way to unlock their magic.

The joke lands because it feels both surreal and uncomfortably accurate, the kind of exaggerated ritual that mirrors the frenzy of real-world unboxings, livestream sales, and social media “summoning” of the next hot drop. Even Jesus, drafted here as a weary school counselor, looks horrified when he stumbles upon the “found footage” of these ceremonies.

By portraying Labubus as quasi-religious idols, South Park skewers not only the toy itself but also the way consumer culture slips into worship, where belief, identity, and devotion get stitched into the seams of a mass-produced plush.

The 3 Ts: Tariffs, toys and Trump

The episode does not just stop at playground chaos, it drags trade policy into the mix. At the “Pop-Up Asian Store,” Butters learns that every blind-box Labubu now costs a staggering $85. The clerk snarls, “You gotta pay tariff,” blaming the inflated price on Donald Trump’s import taxes. It is a pointed jab: the kind of satire South Park relishes, where global economics get distilled into the misery of a kid scraping together allowance money.

By connecting the ugliest-cute plush on Earth to tariff politics, the show turns a toy craze into a mini-lesson on how policy decisions ripple through culture, making toys symbols of both status and the absurdity of global trade.

Butters and the claw machine

After wasting money on blind boxes, Butters finds salvation in the unlikeliest place: an arcade claw machine. Against all odds, and to the horror of the store clerk, he snags the exact rare Labubu he needs. The gag flips the logic of scarcity upside down. While collectors pay inflated prices thanks to tariffs, Butters lucks out with a quarter and some shaky claw skills.

The clerk’s fury at “losing” tariff income becomes the punchline, a sly reminder that in South Park’s world, business, politics, and consumer desire all collapse into a single rigged game. The claw machine win is pure Butters, bumbling, random, yet weirdly triumphant, and the perfect way to puncture the inflated seriousness of the craze.

South Park, Labubu and collapsing craze

While Butters battles the blind boxes, the episode cuts to Fox News, where anchors gleefully speculate on whether Donald Trump is f***ing Satan. The network drowns in its own sensationalism, treating the rumor like breaking news, while ignoring anything resembling real policy.

The absurdity peaks when the kids’ latest Labubu ritual actually summons both Trump and Satan into South Park. But instead of awe, the children instantly abandon their dolls, dropping them on the floor as if the fad never mattered.

This is a perfect South Park twist: the craze implodes the moment it delivers something bigger, stranger, and more grotesque than the hype promised. Labubu mania collapses not with a bang but with a shrug, replaced in seconds by the next chaotic distraction.

Labubu vs. Lafufu: the devil is in the teeth

One of the slyest in-jokes of the episode is that the South Park version of Labubu does not even get the teeth right. Real Labubus, created by Kasing Lung, are famous for their signature grin, a precise row of nine sharp little fangs. That number is so iconic that collectors use it as a quick authenticity test. The South Park parody doll smooths over the detail, giving the creature more teeth and a sheepish smile. Fans instantly clocked it: this was not Labubu, it was Lafufu.

“Lafufu” is the slang collectors use for counterfeits. Fake dolls flood the market, and the fastest giveaway is the mouth, the wrong number of fangs, badly spaced, or missing altogether.

South Park leans into that joke by animating a doll that is off-model on purpose, echoing the counterfeit chaos in real toy aisles. The result is a gag that works both ways: Butters treasures it as rare, while audiences in the know are laughing at the wrong-mouth Lafufu he is holding.

Creator spotlight: Kasing Lung and Labubu’s origins

Behind the chaos lies a real artist. Labubu was created in 2015 by Hong Kong–born illustrator Kasing Lung, who grew up in the Netherlands and now works in Belgium. What started as part of his Nordic-folklore–inspired picture-book trilogy The Monsters soon evolved into a collectible universe. By 2019, Lung partnered with China’s Pop Mart to release Labubu as vinyl blind-box figures, transforming a niche character into a global icon.

Labubu’s design is deceptively simple: long ears, furred body, bug-eyed stare, and that unmistakable row of nine tiny fangs. It is the grin that makes the doll both eerie and endearing, “ugly-cute” as fans describe it.

Lung himself admitted he never imagined the toy would move beyond art circles, but within a decade, Labubu had gone from obscure mascot to fashion status symbol. Today it exists in endless variations, from pocket charms to four-foot plushes, each iteration keeping the teeth count that separates the real deal from the fakes.

From BLACKPINK's Lisa to TikTok: K-pop fuels the frenzy

Labubu’s transformation from niche art toy to global obsession can be traced back to a single moment: BLACKPINK’s Lisa casually showing off a Labubu charm on Instagram in 2024. That blink-and-you-miss-it post detonated the craze, sparking a tidal wave of fan demand across Asia and beyond. Pop Mart’s sales skyrocketed, with reports of revenue leaping nearly 200 percent in the wake of the so-called “Lisa effect.”

Other celebrities quickly followed, with Rihanna, Cher, Naomi Osaka, and even Javier Bardem spotted with the rabbit-eared plush. But it was the K-pop pipeline that sealed Labubu’s fate.

TikTok and WeChat livestreams turned blind-box unboxings into performance art, with influencers ripping open packs in front of audiences who treated every reveal like a cliffhanger. Fans lined up outside pop-ups from Harrods to Dover Street Market, while hashtags flooded with photos of collectors dressing their Labubus in outfits, comparing rare pulls, and joking about “summoning” the next wave of drops. By the time Comic-Con exclusives were selling out in minutes, Labubu had gone from cute oddity to K-pop–powered cultural juggernaut.

Real-world mania: conventions, collabs and counterfeits

Labubu’s reach now stretches far beyond toy aisles. At San Diego Comic-Con 2025, Pop Mart’s booth became a full-blown attraction branded as the “Ultimate Play Stop,” complete with exclusive blind-box drops, fan lotteries, and candy-making pop-ups. What once was a niche collectible had muscled into the same space as Marvel and Star Wars, proof that a fangy plush could command geek culture’s biggest stage.

High fashion has joined the party too. For Labubu’s 10th anniversary, French trunkmaker Moynat unveiled a capsule collaboration, splashing the monster across handbags and charms. One Piece and Coca-Cola have already had their Labubu blind-box tie-ins, cementing the character as a crossover darling.

But mania breeds knockoffs. Counterfeits, affectionately nicknamed “Lafufu” by fans, have flooded markets worldwide. The fastest way to spot one is the teeth, the wrong number, crooked, or missing entirely. As I mentioned before, South Park’s off-model version felt like a parody ripped straight from this counterfeit chaos.

In the UK, scuffles broke out in stores over limited releases, forcing Pop Mart to suspend sales temporarily, while Russian politicians even floated banning the toy for being too “scary.” These real-world absurdities echo the exaggerated chaos at South Park Elementary, blurring the line between satire and reality.

The deeper message behind the Labubu's episode of South Park

Beneath the gore gags and tariff jokes, South Park’s Labubu episode is a study in how consumer culture slips into worship. By showing children performing occult rituals on dolls, the show exaggerates but also clarifies the devotion fandoms project onto objects. Labubu becomes a stand-in for every craze, from Beanie Babies to Pokémon cards, where scarcity and hype inflate meaning until the spell breaks.

The parody also insists on how fragile identity becomes when tethered to a fad. At one moment, Labubus are status symbols worth blood sacrifice; the next, they are abandoned in the dirt once something louder, stranger, and more grotesque takes the spotlight. Identity, like consumer loyalty, is fickle and fleeting.

Even the counterfeit gag points to this instability. A Labubu with the wrong number of teeth can still command affection, because the frenzy is not really about the toy itself but about belonging, about proving you are in on the craze. In exaggerating that logic, South Park holds up a cracked mirror to fandoms, media, and even politics, where authenticity is constantly blurred by performance.

By the end, Butters may have his “rare” Lafufu in hand, but the audience is left with a sharper prize: the realization that it only takes one celebrity selfie, one tariff hike, or one grotesque news cycle to turn an obscure art toy into a global cult, and then just as quickly, into yesterday’s joke.