What are blind boxes? The latest Asian retail craze to hit Minnesota

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.

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.

“It started, like, a serious addiction,” she said after making a purchase at Kinoko Kids. “It’s like a little gambling addiction. It’s like an affordable version, depending how crazy you get. … They’re so beautiful and like a little tiny piece of art that’s handmade. And then you just keep getting them and getting them and getting them every time you see them until you have a hundred.”

Before Rosedale Center officially opened this past Friday, there were already seven people lined up at the Pop Mart “Robo Shop” vending machine, said the mall’s general manager, Lisa Crain.

“People are coming in two to three times a week to say, ‘Hey, is this collectible toy in yet?’” Crain said.

The vending machine, opened in March, is Pop Mart’s only location in Minnesota; the nearest physical store is in Chicago. Pop Mart, which did not return requests for comment, leases the spot from Rosedale but handles all the machine’s operations.

Pop Mart’s blind boxes range from about $5 to $30 and have attracted celebrity fans like Lisa from K-pop group Blackpink. Shares of Pop Mart, traded on the Hong Kong stock exchange, have grown more than 300% in value this year. Its revenue through the third quarter was $890.5 million, up 29.5% from a year ago.

Miniso, on the New York Stock Exchange, has seen its revenue grow about 20% through the first nine months of the year to $1.75 billion.

Miniso opened its first U.S. location near Los Angeles in 2017, said Michael Jung, its marketing manager. After opening 150 stores this year, Miniso will have more than 270 U.S. locations. One is at St. Cloud’s Crossroads Center, which opened shortly ahead of Black Friday. The second will open at Eden Prairie Center in January.

Blind boxes are Miniso’s bestseller, with Hello Kitty boxes “hands down” the biggest draw, said Christina Tran, digital marketing manager for Miniso USA. They account for roughly 15% to 20% of total sales.

Miniso sells its own branded blind boxes, collaborating with major franchises such as Sanrio, Disney, Pixar, Harry Potter, Care Bears and We Bare Bears.

Beyond the surprise element, “as consumers are prioritizing experiences over just product purchases in general. With the blind boxes, it’s kind of given them a satisfaction of both,” Tran said.

Miniso and Pop Mart aren’t the only expanding blind box retailers. Ebisu, a Japanese lifestyle store, already has locations at the Mall of America and the Asia Mall where shoppers can find Japanese blind boxes. Crain said Ebisu is coming to Rosedale in January, on the lower level next to Dick’s Sporting Goods.

“This Asian pop culture is so hot right now in all of our leasing. We’re seeing it across the country,” Crain said. “I just think it’s a really interesting trend we’re seeing in real estate.”

The trend goes beyond specialty retailers. Small businesses and other stores are joining in on the blind box trend, too.

K-pop store Sweet Escape in the Maplewood Mall, for example, sells blind boxes, since the quest for random photocards included in K-pop albums is similar to the pursuit of blind box figures. Several of the Japanese-style claw machine arcades in the Twin Cities offer blind boxes as prizes. Even bookseller Barnes and Noble has a number of blind boxes for sale at various Twin Cities locations.

Sabrina Falcone, Barnes and Noble’s senior merchandise manager for toys and games, said blind boxes have become a large part of the bookstore’s business since it began selling them in 2014. In about 2017, Barnes and Noble started stocking “cuter” Japanese characters, including cartoon egg Gudetama and Studio Ghibli anime.

“The blinds were always top-selling items, their impulse pricing and the joy around opening a little hidden treasure making them an easy purchase,” Falcone said in a statement.

Kinoko Kids, in south Minneapolis’ Kingfield neighborhood, opened in 2017 and added blind boxes about two years ago. Owners Erika Olson Gross and Tammy Tanaka Johnson had been fans of blind boxes for a while. Olson Gross was an exchange student in Japan, and Tanaka Johnson grew up in Japan’s Hyōgo prefecture before moving to Minnesota in 1992 with her St. Paul-native mother.

The two met working at the now-closed Origami restaurant in downtown Minneapolis and opened Kinoko as a way to meld Olson Gross’ love of child development with Tanaka Johnson’s interest in vintage kids’ clothes. Blind boxes, they worried, would distract from that, but a couple of years ago, a seasonal worker told them how big Sonny Angels were on TikTok and convinced them to sell them.

“That was really lucky because I got an account with Dreams, which is the supplier of Sonny Angels, and then very shortly after that, they stopped having new retailers because they can’t keep up with demand,” Olson Gross said.

Kinoko Kids is one of few verified sellers of Sonny Angels in the state, charging about $11 per box and limiting purchases to two per customer. They jokingly call their phone “the Sonny Angel Hotline,” as most calls to the shop inquire about the blind boxes. Kinoko even started a trade-in box, filled mostly with repeat Sonny Angels that customers are hoping to swap with each other.

When Kinoko does receive a Sonny Angel shipment, they share on-sale times on their social media. Shoppers then line up along the block for their chance to snag two, and the store sells out within hours.

“I got scared because this lady was in a camping chair with a blanket,” Tanaka Johnson said of the last Sonny Angel drop. “‘How long have you been here?! Are you OK?!’”

Olson Gross remembered a customer who was in the middle of a pedicure when he saw Kinoko had restocked Sonny Angels. He ran out mid-spa treatment so he wouldn’t miss the chance to buy some Sonnys.

Both Olson Gross and Tanaka Johnson credit blind boxes with introducing their small business to another demographic and bringing in another revenue stream.

“It’s actually been really amazing because it’s brought this whole new group of people into our shop and different ages of people. We would interact with grandparents and parents, and then we’d interact with little kids, but there was a whole kind of in-between age groups that we weren’t really seeing in here very much,” Olson Gross said. “Since we started carrying blind boxes, that has really opened things up.”