The sad thing is not people getting addicted. As you said, it's just neurochemistry. You wouldn't blame someone for getting addicted to cigarettes. The sad thing is that people get addicted to idiotic things by mindlessly following celebrities and influencers. "My favorite singer is smoking (carrying a labubu). It's so cool, I have do the same!".

If they're reasonably priced, I don't see a problem. Especially to get rid of older merch, or just swag. But turning it into a business for profit is disgusting and screams ripping off the buyer.

I haven't seen or looked into them in a long time, but someone had a shirt, stickers, merch, lanyards, etc, for like $15. I think it was a YouTuber or something, not a subscription bullshit model. Seemed reasonable if it was something you really liked and wanted to support.

I don't get the appeal of digital lootboxes, but physical ones are even worse! Now I need to find space for this useless tat?

Yeah, Japanese media really goes hard into this blind box merch. Be it these Figurines, Gachapon machines or the new years tradition of Fukubukuro, buying without knowing what you'll get is culturally much more normalized there.

It's all unregulated gambling as far as I care, ban it all. Be it from there or homegrown, preying on the gambling addicts is just scummy.

Labubus make as much sense as crypto currency.

To me, it is a false equivalence. Sport cards are based on people. Though I'd give you, they could just be bound by team and year instead of being random. But like, when Ken Griffey Jr.'s rookie card came out, no one could have guessed what would happen there.

And MTG is a game that's constantly evolving. Here, I think the randomness was a planned mechanic that helps keep the game balanced and interesting (or it did like 30 years ago when I played). Might be a different story now, but doing a broken meta deck just was far less likely. Getting an assortment of colors encourages, especially new players, to try different approaches since each color (again, at least in my day) plays very differently.

But these blind box things are largely made to just be a fad. They're created, hoping they'll catch on with a demographic, to generate money... and landfill waste. You can go into a card shop and buy/trade/sell sports cards, or game cards (MTG/Pokemon). After the hype for these blind box toys, there's no more demand. They create scarcity for the sake of driving sales. They employ psychologists for this type of stuff. These aren't like the coin machines back in the day, where you could actually see the toys. They know that if you could see what was there, sales would tank.

Sports cards are a piece of history, a physical note of what was for a given player at a specific time. MTG/Pokemon are games. In both cases, you could just collect, but there's more to them. But with the blind box toys, they're just physical loot boxes. They exist only to be collected. Much like Beanie Babies back in the day. Or literally anything that's ever called it's a collector's item or an investment... It's just garbage. But now, they add in a known addiction mechanic to it, and target kids and AGGRESSIVELY advertise. You can call them all dumb, sure, that's fine, I haven't collected MTG or baseball cards in 30 years because I share a similar sentiment. And I'm not ignoring the tactics, the card games, or sports cards also employ... I do think they could change, and should change, but they won't. But I believe they are less predatory, but not above criticism or review themselves.

In 5 years, is anyone going to care about a Lububu? No. Does anyone care about the crap my mom collected in her youth, no. But the things she liked to collect, when she walked into a shop, she could see what they had and buy exactly what she wanted. No tactics, just dumb things she liked. Same when I collected Amiibo. I could see what I was buying.

I'm hoping I'm making sense. Just because one thing is kinda sketchy, doesn't mean it's fine for another thing to be completely sketchy because "people are just having fun". It's not fun when someone goes into financial ruin and you pivot to "well, that was your choice," because that's now how addiction works.

it’s all gambling and slot machines, roulette, and the lottery are all legal - probably far more damaging too

Alright so because my only-fans revolves around jerking off on a figurine of an innocent assassin-milf suddenly I deserve to be economically exploited? Try not to yuck any more yums on your way out.

Also, yeah fuck loot boxes I don't dance that jig.

I think this every time with gaming lootbox regulations as well. Like honestly, yes regulate it but where's the age check for buying pokemon cards?

Buying a pack of Magic the Gathering isn't arguably different from buying a scratch ticket. Most packs are worth less once you open them and sometimes are worth nothing once the contents are revealed.

Edit: Fuck the downvotes, I maintain there's a significant difference between coloured plastic/paper with no game attached, and a game you need materials for. Or are we lumping D&D rulebooks and wargaming miniatures in here with Labubus too?

While most of your post is spot-on, I don't think Magic: The Gathering belongs here. Magic is a (fun, to us) game that I've played with my friends for decades. The cards also have nice art on them most of the time. People can and do totally spend as much on Magic as the other fandoms listed, but what game are Labubus for, or baseball cards? Thus, I feel M:TG is the odd one out in this list.

Amen

As they say in the article, it's gambling. Gambling is inherently irrational.

Same way people won't pay 5$ to take a 50% chance to earn 6$, but some will consider a 0.00005% chance to earn 6,000,000$. If the extreme's are worth enough, some people just focus on that instead of considering the odds.

Yeah I think some people just can't help spending money on little dopamine hits. I don't think there's anything you can really do about it. Even if you ban blind boxes/loot boxes entirely they'll just find something else, or pick some random product like water bottles or beanie babies and decide they're 'rare' or whatever that was about.

I guess the thing they're trying to get is a bigger dopamine hit.