At 10:58 a.m., two minutes before opening one day last week, Kinoko Kids’ first customer came through the door.
Sean Sullivan, who owns a tattoo parlor around the corner in south Minneapolis, braved the morning snow dump in pursuit of a very specific item: blind boxes.
“I probably have 100 in my shop,” 30-year-old Sullivan said, showing off his latest buy, a Kitan Club blind box that contained one of various figurine cats peeking out of a retro matchbox.
Blind boxes are the latest Asian trend to sweep through the U.S., following the well-trod path of anime and K-pop. And while blind boxes look a lot like toys, the collectible art’s main demographic is mostly Gen Z and millennials, who will often line up for hours, scour online resellers and spend hundreds of dollars to secure their favorites.
For those uninitiated, a blind box is basically a mystery purchase. The general idea is retailers will either take a well-loved character — Pokémon, Harry Potter, Hello Kitty — or create their own — like Dreams’ Sonny Angel and Smiski or Pop Mart’s Molly and Labubu — and design a series of figurines around a theme. The Sonny Angel Harvest Series, for example, has the angelic naked baby wearing various fruits and vegetables as hats. Buyers don’t know which one is in their box, though, until after they purchase and open it.
Sage Phillips opens a Mofusand blind box just after purchasing it at Kinoko Kids in Minneapolis. (Leila Navidi)
And one in every 100 or so boxes, there’s a secret: a figurine of unknown design that’s ultra rare and highly prized.
Retailers in Minnesota and beyond have tapped into this consumer appetite for mystery and whimsy, particularly during this holiday shopping season. Cognitive Market Research estimated the global sales revenue for blind boxes in 2024 to be $14.3 billion, with $4.5 billion in the U.S. alone. China-based blind box retailers like Pop Mart and Miniso have been rapidly expanding stateside, including their first outposts in Minnesota.
Erin Waite, 33, of northeast Minneapolis, bought her first blind box a couple of years ago as a way to relive her childhood love of Pokémon. But that nostalgic throwback soon evolved.