The card blind box that follows the tide of blind boxes is on fire. To what extent is the fire?
Last month, a primary school student in Hangzhou spent all the 1300 yuan of stolen ultraman cards in the blind box in order to collect the Ultraman card, and the parents were angry and called the police to cause heated discussion; in July this year, a primary school student in Wuhan who was also obsessed with buying ultraman "card bags" spent more than 7,000 yuan for "drawing cards"; previously, what was more, in order to meet the child's similar desire to collect cards, it cost tens of thousands of yuan in two years. This phenomenon is not accidental, but occurs from time to time.
So, what is the magic of the "blind card" that is popular on campus and especially popular among elementary school students? What kind of business is hidden behind it? What are the implications of the blind selling model?
The "blind card" is on fire, and the low market has blown up the wind of collecting cards
The popularity of the "blind card" is not mysterious.
And after the 80s and 90s when they played Water Margin cards, Pokémon, and game ace cards, the know-how is like copying and pasting, relying on the death of primary school students, otherwise there will be no strange things that are not uncommon in the previous article.
The Ultraman card that makes children crazy is the new upstart in today's doll circle, and who makes Ultraman recognized as the top of today's elementary school students.
From kindergartens to primary schools, in the commissaries and print shops around each school, chain convenience stores such as 7-11 and FamilyMart, as well as Mingchuang Premium, and even Wal-Mart, Yonghui, and mother and baby stores, this small card printed with Ultraman, throughout various channels, with incredible magic, attracts groups of children to linger.
There are even many parents who say that the pomp and circumstance after dinner in the community today has an atmosphere of underground trading: a group of children, each holding a booklet of Ultraman cards, like a joint, pretending to pass in front of each other from all directions, and suppressing the voice "Do you have this card?" and "I want to produce a full star SP card, how much do you change?" ”......
If any child does not have a few decent Ultraman cards in his hand, he will not be able to squeeze into this card changing circle. So the parents could not resist the various cries and cries of the "divine beast" and opened the buy-buy-buy mode. If you don't buy it for your child, your child may be able to take the money to buy, save money to buy, steal the family's money to buy, or even go to the store to steal.
The reason why children will buy cards like crazy, in addition to love, is actually forced by social needs.
When you ask them why they like it, especially children in the younger age group, there is a high probability that they will get an answer: because other children are playing!
When everyone plays ultraman cards, it becomes a carrier of communication between children, common hobbies, common talk, you have me, you know me, you know me, everyone can talk. It's not surprising that the kids not only know how to compare ultramans, but also discuss, exchange, and resell cards. The back-and-forth exchanges and exchanges between them have become longer and more stable.
But some parents will question whether the cost of this friendship is a bit large? Obviously, as soon as he entered the card, it was as deep as the sea, and his wallet was cramped and deflated.
That's right, that's exactly what the biggest winner card behind ultraman cards has come to fruition. The ability to confuse the underprivileged groups led by elementary school students relies on more than just the trick of social currency.
The endless stream of new tricks that are dizzying is the focus.
Just like the equipment in the game has a rarity rating, Ultraman also has R cards, SR cards, SSR cards, UR cards, and SP cards, etc., determined by the number of stars, the more stars, the higher the level, the rarer the cards. Among them, R card, SR card is a regular card, SSR card, UR card, SP card is a rare card, such as SP card is rare in the rarity, the market circulation rate is very low, each set of only one. According to the different production process, on the basis of rare cards, CARDS such as CP cards and HR cards (that is, 3D cards, which can feel the bumpy feel) have been developed.
How many categories and how many grades there are for Ultraman cards, parents will never understand, and children will never be able to buy them.
That's not enough, kids want to get rare cards, just as hard as adults want Molly's Journey to the West Golden Special. Because Kayou and Bubble Mart use the same form of sale: blind box mode. Each pack of cards, before you take them apart, you don't know if there are any rare cards you want inside.
The small blind box divides the world into boxes and outside the box, curiosity and obsession, and the blind box seems to become the only light in the life of the pursuer.
At the same time, Kayou has set up the rules of the game that make adults addicted.
Kayou's Ultraman cards mainly have two categories: "X Files" and "Hero Showdown", the former is collected, and the latter can be used to duel with small partners. Each of the dueling cards has a different height and weight of Ultraman or monster, attack and defense index, and adaptability in different terrains, and Kayou has established a systematic set of duel rules. Even specially customized related events, it seems to be quite formal, there are novice competitions, monthly competitions, SP competitions, city tour competitions, etc., and finally compete for the national championship.
At this point, the huge mental system of a small card breaks the age limit and interlocks. This is not the originality of card games, but comes from the "card collection" culture and marketing routines that have been used for decades in Japan, Europe and the United States.
At the beginning of the "set card" culture
The business behind it is beyond imagination
Trading Card, a trading card, is first produced by the publishing company with hundreds of cards on sports, anime, idols, etc., and then players collect, exchange, and appreciate. Because the cards are randomly placed in the bag, it is impossible to know which card it is when purchasing, and it will not be easily collected.
The earliest trading cards in Japan were the "Professional Baseball Card" and the "Kamen Rider Card".
From 1971 to 1974, Japan's Calebbi sold snacks with Kamen Rider cards, which once triggered a wave of purchases and collections, and eventually forced to stop production due to the waste of food, and "Monogatari consumption" was also proposed with this phenomenon. In simple terms, Monogatari consumption is to use the story represented by the card and the symbol behind it as the purpose of consumption (symbol value), replacing the purpose of consumption of eating (use value).
The Water Margin Card that makes countless post-80s and post-90s souls dream originated here. At that time, Little Raccoon borrowed from this marketing method and sold crisp noodle food with Water Margin cards, which set off a powerful collection card boom in the era when there was no mobile phone. At that time, primary school students were already addicted to the "Krypton gold lottery card" because of these food and play, and they could not extricate themselves.
The cool card surface plus the classic IP persona bonus made this set of cards a fashion vane for primary school students that year, and soon, the topic of everyone in the class changed from the cartoon of the first night to the link of posting cards with each other. If anyone has two or three boxes of noodles in his hand, he may not be able to draw the big brother Song Jiang, and he will inevitably become the existence of the stars in the class.
Today, time and emotion have given these cards value beyond themselves. The rarer and better the appearance, the more valuable it is. On the salted fish, Song Jiang and Lu Junyi's hard-sided flashcards are basically above 2800 yuan; the rarest card Wang Hu Sanniang, soft flash three digits, hard flash reached 50,000 or 60,000.
Rare cards, like loot and medals, satisfy the boy's desire to collect, and have a high collection value, which is also the fun of the exchange card.
There are also special exchange card shops in Japan, like the cards that were popular 30 years ago before the professional baseball players retired, and some of them are 100,000 yen. There are also popular "star cards" in Japan, Europe and the United States, and some rare cards can sell for millions of dollars. For example, a James rookie star card sold for $5.2 million; a Babe Ruth rookie baseball star card sold for $6 million.
If the business of Raccoon and Kamen Riders is still at the level of limited-time release and collection, the ambition of the card game of making a lot of money has long been expanded to the trading card game TCG.
On September 26, some media exposed the news of card game financing, and the new shareholder was Sequoia Capital. Some investors said that Sequoia Capital's valuation of Kayou was at the level of 1 billion US dollars, Kayou built a VIE structure, and Sequoia Capital used the US dollar fund to invest in Kayou's overseas entities. In April, on the investor community platform, some netizens pointed out that the business of Kayou has maintained a growth rate of 100% in the past two or three years, and the business volume has been comparable to that of Bubble Mart. In 2021, it will achieve 3 billion yuan in revenue and 1.5 billion yuan in net profit, while the high-profile bubble mart last year had a revenue of 2.513 billion yuan and a net profit of 591 million yuan.
In contrast, Kayou's business is much better than that of Bubble Mart.
This is first and foremost due to its ultra-low cost. When Bubble Mart is still racking its brains for original IP and redesigning the doll shape, Kayou has already printed and sold the IP it bought at a cost of 0.1 yuan per sheet.
The second is to emulate the ip and deck design, events, fan communities and second-hand markets in the international market.
Pokémon, Game King, Magic, etc., have continued to build IP through cross-media content and related products such as comics, animation, and games for decades, forming a huge fan base and building a consumer base for Kayou's TCG products.
Kayou has more than 70% of the popular anime IP licenses at home and abroad, such as Ultraman, Marvel, Naruto, Harry Potter, and Ye Luoli. In the field of IP cards, especially ultraman cards, CardYou is an absolute giant, accounting for more than 90% of the card market. In addition to online channels such as Tmall and JD.com, Kayou has more than 100 distributors offline, and its products are spread throughout more than 100,000 terminal stores across the country.
The difference in the rarity of the cards lays the foundation for their collectible value, and factors such as the huge game play rotation rules have led to the formation of a sizable second-hand market in TCG, allowing players to buy or resell cards according to their needs. It seems that elementary school students can only spend 10 yuan to a few hundred yuan to buy a set of ultraman cards for a card game, but in fact, its rare and competitive design mobilizes the children's curiosity and comparison psychology, as well as the flexible use of different cards to build a game that meets the rules of the card deck.
The young flowers, led by boys, while supporting the huge business empire of the kayou, are not spared to be immersed in it.
Addictive, deformed consumption
"Card fever" hollowed out whose wallets
Ultraman cards occupy the minds of teenagers through the outlet of trading cards.
Following the trend of "self-pleasing" consumption that focuses on inner happiness, blind boxes, which have a large number of adult consumer groups, have captured the obsession of children and some adults. It brings great benefits to merchants, brings addictive fun to players, and also brings troubles and problems to some parents.
The small cards put on the coat of the blind box, with social attributes, so that the children are like adults with hidden models, kryptonite gold to no friends. Children draw sets of rare cards while emptying their own and their parents' pockets.
This pattern of blind selling and kidnapping is becoming more and more intense.
It can be seen from reports across the country that addiction and deformed consumption phenomenon are frequent, and there are various undesirable phenomena such as comparison and spending thousands of dollars among primary school students addicted to Ultramanka. Compared with simple collection and love, duel-type trading cards, it is difficult to get immature teenagers out of it.
At the end of last year, Xinhua News Agency published an article pointing out that behind the surprises and expectations, the addiction and gambling psychology brought about by the "blind box fever" are also breeding deformed consumption.
In April, researchers at the University of Plymouth and the University of Wolverhampton found in a study that "blind boxes" are structurally and psychologically similar to gambling. The findings include:
About 5% of gamers contribute about half of the revenue to the box;
12 of the 13 studies on the topic were directly linked to gambling behavior;
Young people are most likely to participate in blind boxes/out-of-the-box/draws – a result associated with increased educational attainment and use.
The popularity of "card fever" has its rationality, but it should have a bottom line and a boundary.
Although some people in the education sector have analyzed that as they grow older, children's interests will shift. In this process, parents can establish a correct concept of consumption for their children, and timely counseling, trying to avoid excessive comparison psychology and out-of-control consumption. But at the same time, this process also requires the efforts of businesses and all sectors of society.
For example, it cannot spread "gambling" wildly, and it cannot attack children with poor self-control. If you "cut leeks" without a bottom line, the entire industry will probably encounter "zero tolerance" from society.
In the final analysis, whether it is a "blind box" or a "draw card", any goods and games with a gambling nature that are easy to trigger purchase addiction should not set up a set for the child and treat the child as the object of "hunting".