Labubus have one of the most sophisticated marketing on Twitch and YouTube, by the same people who are paid to promote anime and gaming "conferences".

I agree that reality and fiction unfortunately merges for a subset of the population. The gaming addicted are also most likely to develop an AI addiction, because LLMs and agent setups are basically a computer game.

Huh, most anime cons have horrendous if any marketing. Beyond basic social feeds most of their reach these days are from inviting "influencers" to join in on panels, cosplay judging contests, etc. Which in turn pisses off a lot of the con's main audience as rarely are these influencers sufficiently knowledgable on the topics (ie little knowledge on costume making, barely aware of a given series, etc).

Few if any western anime cons have managed to get any sort of meaningful virality in terms of marketing, whether organic or manufactured. And especially little from the labubu type crowd given cons are more male dominated, and labubu far more of a women's interest.

The big thing labubus had beyond the gambling aspect was that its something you can put on your bag and actually bring around places, far more visibility than most other "viral" goods. It was an accessory.