A factory employee made a mistake and sewed his smile upside down. The horse was sad instead of happy. The copy, which was going to be auctioned off as defective, generated a rare passion among office workers. This is how it was born “The Crying Horse”a toy sensation in the Asian giant.
The horse’s origin story sounds like something out of a Toy Story movie.
Zhang, the owner of the toy store Happy Sister, in Zhejiang province, said that at the time he thought about offering a refund to those who bought the sad horse.
However, before doing so, he began to notice that many people were uploading photos to local social networks alluding that this was what the employees looked like at their office job (unlike the happy horse, which was how they looked after it).
This is how Zhang decided to continue making them happy, but also sad. The horse is 20 cm tall and costs approximately three and a half dollars.
“Many customers like it and say it makes sense: that suits the spirit of today’s corporate slaves”Zhang acknowledged to Reuters.
Lou, a vendor at the Yiwu small goods wholesale market, said many people asked “about the sad-looking creature.” He also lamented about the reason for the toy’s fame.
The crying horse, which due to its color represents good luck and has the phrase embroidered “money comes fast”, is an unexpected rage of the run-up to the Lunar New Year.
And if we talk about successful toys…
And the Labubus?
Everyone already knows what a Labub. Or, if not, you heard that word somewhere at least once in your life.
Last year, these collectible toys were all the rage in China and, later, in the rest of the world. An uncontrollable fashion.
With the arrival of the Labubu within the collection The Monsters In 2015, the company Pop Mart It fed hungry collectors and fashion chasers. Everyone started wanting to have one.
Pop Mart sells them in blind boxes where the buyer does not know which model they will receive until they open it. This strategy generated a culture of unstoppable collecting.
Its price averages 50 dollars in the United States, but hundreds of dollars are mobilized on the black market for each one of them. Local data makes it clear: as of July 2025, Labubu sales in Argentina grew by 300%, a viral e-commerce phenomenon.
Today, the company has more than 370 stores in China and stores in the United States and Europe, which demonstrates the devotion there is to these toys.
