That abomination of a sentence is the story of Labubu, the creepy-cute stuffed monster that swept the world this summer. What’s new about Labubu, however, is that it’s the first time a Chinese company was able to engineer this level of success and cultural impact. The story of Labubu begins in Hong Kong in the 1970s and early ‘80s, when the city became a manufacturing hub for toys. From Mattel and Disney to Japan’s Bandai, almost every major toy company was outsourcing production to factories in Hong Kong, due to the low labor costs there. Howard Lee, the founder of a Hong Kong toy studio called How2Work, told me how that period of history shaped his childhood.