"It's like obsessive-compulsive disorder, you must buy it one by one."
Xiao Ya (pseudonym), who is in her junior year of college, is a veteran blind box enthusiast. From the first year of high school to buy the first doll, Xiao Ya was unable to collect, and at most the money for buying a blind box every month was close to her monthly living expenses.
Another hipster play enthusiast, Ruo'er (pseudonym), said that over the past four years, he has spent hundreds of thousands of yuan on his own baby, and at most there are more than a thousand large dolls, sculptures, and blind boxes at home.
In fact, it is not uncommon for people like Xiaoya and Ruo'er to "spend a lot of money" to buy blind boxes. In the past two years, when blind boxes for all things can be blinded, variants such as blind boxes for stationery have even targeted school-age children and minors, and these blind boxes have a serious premium.
Recently, in order to standardize the blind box business activities, protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers and safeguard the social public interest, the Shanghai Municipal Supervision Bureau has formulated and issued the "Shanghai Blind Box Business Activities Compliance Guidelines".
The Guidelines put forward advocacy suggestions for specific blind box business activities, including standardizing the blind box price system, clarifying the rules for blind box extraction, encouraging the setting of a guarantee mechanism, strengthening the after-sales guarantee of goods, standardizing marketing speculation and setting up a mechanism for the protection of minors, etc., drawing a red line for blind box business activities.
In fact, in recent years, with the heat of the blind box economy, the blind box market has frequent chaos. There are live pet blind boxes that disregard bioethics, and there are more tides to play blind boxes in the secondary market to speculate on "sky-high prices". Veteran players of the tide playing blind box revealed to the Beijing News shell financial reporter that there are a variety of hunger marketing methods when merchants sell blind boxes, and the blind box transaction in the secondary market is also mixed. In this regard, some experts believe that the phenomenon of blind box sales and secondary market speculation is essentially gambling in disguise, which should be strictly supervised, and the newly issued "Guidelines" have positive significance for regulating the blind box market.
The hidden blind box of the whole cabinet of Xiao Yajia. Courtesy of respondents.
Who is crazy for blind boxes: Nearly 200,000 consumers spend 20,000 sets of blind boxes a year, and some consumers have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars
Xiao Ya, who is in her junior year of college, is a veteran blind box enthusiast. From the first year of high school to buy the first doll, Xiao Ya was unable to collect, and at most the money for buying a blind box every month was close to her monthly living expenses. In order to store the dolls bought, Xiao Ya's home also specially made three large cabinets with display lights, and nearly a thousand dolls were displayed in the cabinet at the peak. One of the cabinets is also filled with hidden dolls.
Since there are usually 12 models of each series of tide play blind boxes, Xiao Ya often repeatedly buys the same series of blind boxes in order to collect the whole set, "there is obsessive-compulsive disorder, we must buy one set at a time." This led to the frequent repetition of dolls on the xiaoyajia showcase, with the most repeated one being 7 times. Sometimes in order to gather the same series, Xiaoya will also choose the end box to buy, that is, to buy a complete set of blind boxes at one time. But later because there were too many dolls, Xiaoya began to sell styles she didn't like, "before and after selling three or four hundred, too much to put down," Xiaoya said.
Another wave of play enthusiasts Ruo'er said that in the past four years of playing with dolls, a total of hundreds of thousands of yuan has been spent, and at most there are more than a thousand large dolls, sculptures, and blind boxes at home. Ruo'er said that since coming into contact with the baby circle, his happiest thing is to run various exhibitions. In order to participate in the exhibition, Ruo'er needs to book air tickets, book hotels, grab tickets, queue for three or four hours, pay a lot of time, energy and money, and all in order to buy the latest dolls that they like IP.
When it comes to the tide play blind box, Ruo'er thinks that the price of 59 yuan each is quite cheap, compared with the Akihabara handmade office that he bought is basically at the price of thousands of yuan. Therefore, when you encounter a favorite IP blind box, ruo'er will buy it without hesitation. "After accumulating a certain amount of fans, the IP will be sold in the form of a large doll, and only a small number of people can buy it." The blind box allows ordinary consumers to buy their favorite IP at a relatively low price." Ruo'er described his views on the tide play blind box.
When talking about why it is so "addictive" to blind boxes, Xiao Ya said that she enjoys the joy of unpacking the box instantly, "You don't know what is in the box before opening, and the sense of unknown and surprise makes each blind box have a huge attraction." Ruo'er believes that buying a blind box adds color to his life, so that he is no longer just numb to work, but has more expectations.
In fact, it is not uncommon for people like Xiaoya and Ruo'er to "spend a lot of money" to buy blind boxes. The 2019 Tmall "post-95" player chopping force list shows that nearly 200,000 consumers spend 20,000 sets of blind boxes a year, and the strongest purchasing power consumers spend millions of yuan a year to buy blind boxes. According to the "2021 China Trend Toy Market Development Report" previously released by the National Situation Survey and Big Data Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the trendy toys represented by blind boxes are becoming an important carrier for the leisure and communication of a new generation of young people, and it is expected that the tide play market size will reach 47.8 billion yuan in 2022.
Part of the blind box of Xiao Ya's house. Courtesy of respondents.
Frequent chaos: the hidden premium is nearly 20 times, and some merchants or anchors with goods hide hidden money to inflate the price
According to Allen, a veteran player of the blind box, the general merchant will place a hidden model per box when producing the blind box, and the ratio of the hidden version to the regular model is mostly 1:144. The scarcity of hidden models has also spawned the speculation fever in the second-hand market, the original price of 59 yuan each blind box, if it is a hidden model, the price has soared, and it can be sold in the second-hand market for thousands of yuan, with a premium of nearly 20 times.
In October 2020, attracted by various blind box live broadcasts on Douyin and the love for dolls, Sweet Bean (pseudonym) plunged into the blind box industry with a passion and a brain, holding nearly 100,000 starting funds, and began the entrepreneurial career of dismantling blind boxes live streaming with goods. The so-called "open the blind box live with goods" refers to the anchor in the form of live broadcast to open the blind box to attract netizens to watch, netizens can also buy the blind box for the anchor to disassemble now, dismantle the delivery. According to Sweet Bean, in the blind box live streaming industry, the number of limited blind boxes in the live broadcast room, the number of cooperative blind box companies, and the richness of the blind box variety determine the competitiveness of the live broadcast room. When cooperating with large companies such as Bubble Mart, the discount of the goods obtained by the anchor is different depending on the amount of investment, such as investing 500,000 to 600,000 to get 7.5% off the goods. Some anchors are backed by the company, and the funds are sufficient, and the discounts that can be obtained are even greater.
Sweet bean also revealed to the shell financial reporter that the current blind box industry, whether online or offline, is the norm for privately hidden models to speculate on high prices for profit. In the live broadcast room on the line, the phenomenon of the anchor replacing the hidden model by moving the lens, switching the screen, etc. after drawing the hidden model abounds, and even offline there are many ways to judge the hidden model by using magnets to test the magnetic position in the blind box. Sweet beans, which are unwilling to make profits by hiding and hiding money, closed the live broadcast room in June last year with the decline of live broadcast room data, turned to professional buyers, and snapped up popular IP blind boxes. "The industry is too messy right now." Sweet Bean told Shell Financial Reporter that he believes that the blind box circle has long been not only a gathering place for eva people, but a paradise for capital and middlemen to make huge profits.
Stationery blind box hot sales: the price of ordinary pens draped in blind box coats has doubled, and merchants have extended blind box marketing routines to minors
In addition to the frequent chaos in the secondary market of the tide to play blind boxes, in May last year, the chaos of pet blind boxes also appeared on the hot search several times, triggering heated discussions. On the evening of May 3 last year, animal protection volunteers stopped a Zhongtong express truck in Chengdu's Jinniu District, and in the carriage, more than 160 cats, dogs and dogs transported in plastic baskets were dying, triggering public condemnation. Volunteers involved in the rescue said that the express delivery sheet was written on the precious breed, but inside was pastoral cats and dogs, so they judged that this was a "pet blind box" that had been popular on the Internet before. Under the banner of "precious breed pet blind box" to attract consumers, in fact, the sale of low-priced pastoral breed pets, most netizens believe that the merchant's approach is not only suspected of using blind boxes to deceive consumers, but also shows disregard for life.
With the rapid popularity of the blind box sales model, everything can be blinded, and the merchant has also extended the blind box marketing routine to minors. In November last year, the Shanghai Municipal Consumer Protection Commission released a survey report on the consumption of blind boxes for minors, showing that blind boxes for stationery have become a new fashion among school-age children and minors. Most of the stationery blind boxes on the market contain multiple styles, and even hidden high-grade blind boxes, and other joint blind boxes combined with well-known comics, novels, animations and other IPs. And the marketing routine is in line with the tide play blind box. Minors who do not have strong discernment skills are often keen to buy and collect blind boxes of stationery because of the social needs of classmates and friends.
In the investigation, the Shanghai Municipal Consumer Protection Commission also found that the premium of the blind box of stationery is obvious, and the secondary market is suspected of speculation. Blind box pens have only one more layer of packaging than ordinary neutral pens, but the price is more than double. Taking the price of an e-commerce platform as an example, a brand series of neutral pen blind boxes has a total of 14 kinds of ordinary character models plus 2 kinds of hidden character models, if randomly shipped, one is 6.8 yuan, the price of the designated ordinary people model rises to 7.8 yuan, if the price of the designated hidden character model rises to 68.8 yuan. According to the traditional pen selling model, take off the blind box shell as an ordinary neutral pen to sell, the average retail price is only 3 to 4 yuan, and with the blind box packaging, the hidden premium can be as high as 14 times.
What are the red lines drawn in the first Blind Box Business Activity Compliance Guidelines? Does the blind box heat cool down?
The chaos of excessive marketing and price gouging in the blind box industry has long been criticized by the outside world. Sweet Bean told Shell Financial Reporter that the reason why everyone thinks that the ecology of this industry is very chaotic is largely because of the poor marketing methods of merchants.
Sweet Bean believes that it is not uncommon for blind box merchants to increase brand value through hunger marketing. For example, some IPs have tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of fans, but merchants only sell a few hundred sets of limited editions, so that some models can be arbitrarily premiumized in the market, "which is undoubtedly taking advantage of the mentality of rare and expensive things." Sweet Bean said that although merchants cannot earn the profit of the product premium, this invisibly enhances the brand value of the IP itself, and the profit brought by this increase in value is much higher than the profit of the premium of one or two blind boxes. In reality, in order to enhance their brand value, merchants usually default to the existence of a secondary market that coaxes the price of blind boxes. Some merchants will even personally find scalpers to hype products to increase the popularity of the brand.
Allen, a veteran player of the blind box, also told Shell Financial Reporter that blind box merchants often market through celebrities with goods, wholesale goods, and restrictions. Previously, after the Molly astronaut series was recommended by a Hong Kong star, sales suddenly increased sharply, and the price increased by four or five times. Under the pretext that the production capacity of the merchant is not enough, the hoarding does not ship, and the pre-sale is also one of the common means of hunger marketing. Some time ago, the KFC Dimo co-brand model was also one of the ways to limit marketing. At that time, KFC's co-branded Dimo was sold in limited quantities, which once triggered a rush to buy, and even consumers spent tens of thousands of yuan to buy hundreds of blind box packages. "Many blind box merchants, such as Bubble Mart, the so-called limited sale is largely virtual, and there is no so-called limited edition of toys without numbers," Allen said.
In response to the above chaos, Xue Jun, deputy dean of Peking University Law School, believes that the sale of blind boxes actually has the meaning of gambling and needs to be strictly controlled. The excessive marketing and hunger marketing of blind box merchants will lead to the excessive pursuit of blind boxes with popular products such as hidden models, inducing speculation, which in turn will lead to the proliferation of secondary market speculation. Once a particular blind box on the market is speculated to a very high price, it will form a "lottery effect" that attracts more people to buy blind boxes, "just like gambling, which will eventually lead to irrational purchase of goods by consumers." Xue Jun said.
In view of the above-mentioned business marketing behavior and secondary market chaos, on January 14 this year, the Shanghai Municipal Market Supervision and Administration Bureau issued the "Shanghai Blind Box Business Activities Compliance Guidelines", which clarified the scope of application of the guidelines, drew a red line for the business activities of blind boxes in Shanghai, and put forward blind box business suggestions.
In view of the phenomenon of selling live blind boxes such as pet blind boxes on the market, the Guidelines point out that the business activities of blind boxes should comply with relevant laws and regulations, and the business scope is generally in the fields of daily consumption, literature and entertainment. Laws and regulations clearly stipulate that the sale and circulation of goods prohibited from being sold shall not be sold in the form of blind boxes. Commodities with strict requirements on sales qualifications, storage and transportation, and conditions of use shall not be sold in the form of blind boxes, such as special foods, drugs, medical devices, toxic and harmful substances, inflammable and explosive materials, live animals, etc.
In view of the serious phenomenon of blind box premium, the Guidelines advocate that the actual value of the goods in the blind box should be basically equivalent to its selling price, and the price of a single blind box generally does not exceed 200 yuan. Blind box operators should also clarify the rules for blind box extraction to consumers during sales, and publicize information such as the type of goods, the number of goods to be placed, and the probability of hidden money extraction.
In response to the chaos of speculation in the secondary market of blind boxes, the Guidelines require that blind box operators must not carry out financial-related marketing, must not intervene in the market making of the secondary market, and must not carry out sky-high price speculation, excessive marketing, and hunger marketing. At the same time, the Guidelines encourage blind box operators to publicize the standard, and when the same consumer draws the same series of blind box goods to pay an amount or extract a certain number of times, provide a reasonable way for them to obtain hidden goods or a complete set of goods.
In view of the phenomenon of blind box marketing reaching minors, the Guidelines stipulate that blind box operators shall not sell blind boxes to minors under the age of 8. The sale of blind box goods to minors over the age of 8 should confirm the consent of the guardian through different methods such as online and offline.
"The chaos of the blind box circle is not a matter of one day or two days, and it needs to be regulated by special policies, otherwise those of us who really like blind boxes and have enthusiasm for this industry can only be forced to leave, so that merchants and scalpers will make this market more and more chaotic." Sweet Bean has great expectations for the release of the new policy, and he hopes that through the guidance of relevant policies, blind box merchants can change the hunger marketing model, so that every customer has the opportunity to buy their favorite dolls and create a relatively healthy blind box ecology. However, Xue Jun believes that although the release of the Guidelines has a positive effect on the rectification of the chaos in the blind box market, it should be more stringent in the formulation of specific rules, so as to better regulate the market order.
Beijing News shell financial reporter Li Menghan intern Xiong Ke Editor Yue Caizhou Proofreader Xue Jingning