On September 20, a large number of live pet blind boxes appeared at the entrance of a community on Lehui Road in Jiading District, and hundreds of milk cats and dogs trembled and wailed in the blind boxes. In order to accumulate wealth and regard life as nothing, the "blind box of blood" has once again been pushed to the cusp of public opinion.
In fact, in the past few years, tide play, cosmetics, food, clothing, stationery, air tickets... There is already a trend of "everything can be blinded", and the industry chaos that appears in the middle has caused many problems such as law, morality and integrity, which have attracted more and more attention. Is there a "surprise" or a "fright" in "Pandora's Box"? Is it "national carnival" or "harvesting leeks"? Help Jun to buy more than 100 blind boxes under the order, and dismantle it to find out.
Place an order for real demolition
Stationery blind box
Three nothings! Three nothings!
All are from unknown sources
Ms. Wang, a citizen who lives in Pudong New Area, reported that her daughter, who had just entered the first grade of primary school, came home from school one day and clamored to buy the same "same stationery" as her classmates, and specified that she should buy it from the Internet.
She said that the students bought a "blind box of stationery", and the things they dismantled were different in color and type, and they wanted it very much.
Help Jun open Taobao, search for "stationery blind box", and instantly pop up hundreds of results. After randomly clicking into several stores, I saw that these "stationery blind boxes" were colorful and varied.
Help you communicate with the store for details:
What's the difference between the same price, different colors of the outer packaging, what's the difference between what's inside?
But the merchant's answer is very secret:
Dear, our content details page will have a picture introduction Oh, many are selling very well, you can try it.
Help Jun chose a "blind box of stationery" with a monthly sales of 1656 pieces, each with a unit price of 6.8 yuan, and ordered two models. According to the product detail page, this "stationery blind box" contains three pens, two refills and a solid glue, and declares that "the pressure reduction pen must be out".
After the courier was delivered, he helped Jun to open it and found that there was no difference in the specifications of the contents of the two "stationery blind boxes", but there were slight differences in appearance and pattern:
■ A solid glue for the original packaging;
■ Another solid glue is prescribed and is made into the shape of lipstick.
The so-called "decompression pen" is just a ballpoint pen expanded with foam plastic, writing with such a pen, will the first-grade student's pen holding posture be "out of shape"?
Expanded ballpoint pen
What is more worrying is that I helped Jun to look inside and out, and found that these two "blind boxes of stationery" belong to the "three no products" with no production date, no quality certificate, and no manufacturer.
Tort! Tort!
The workmanship is really rough
There is also a shop that claims to sell "luxury stationery blind boxes" with a unit price of 36.8 yuan. The product even claims that "there are surprises" and "there may be surprises".
Helper Jun immediately purchased this blind box. But when the package is unwrapped, it turns out that this is a gimmick: it is a box of ordinary stationery suits with Disney cartoon images including watercolor pens and pencil sharpeners.
Stationery blind box after disassembly of the item
Help Jun to search through the internal and external packaging, but also did not find any production date, quality certificate and manufacturer information. This roughly made product is also really suspected of infringement.
routine! routine!
Don't mistake your child
In this regard, Gao Jiayan, a mathematics teacher at Haihua Primary School who has many years of experience as a class teacher, said:
More than once, I have reminded parents and students inside and outside the classroom not to blindly "chase" such "blind boxes" of stationery.
■ First of all, it affects learning. If the stationery box contains these "fancy" stationery, in class, many students' attention will often be inattentive, and may breed "comparison" behavior, and even the possibility of causing contradictions.
■ Secondly, the quality is worrying. These products under the banner of "express blind boxes" are often of very general quality, and it is impossible to ensure that the health of students is not infringed.
To buy stationery, you still need to go to a regular store, choose a regular brand, safe and durable.
To this end, Teacher Gao suggested that parents should be cautious about buying "stationery blind boxes" and not letting these many "routines" affect children's learning.
Courier blind box
Inferior! Inferior!
It's all shoddy
Nowadays, people, men and women, young and old, are keen on online shopping. The "sense of ceremony" of dismantling a courier every day has even become an indispensable "existence" in the lives of many people. However, when someone tells you that the courier can still be used as a "blind box" to buy and dismantle, will you be tempted to place an order?
After helping Jun open the Taobao App, searching for the keyword "express blind box", he found that more than 3200 results popped up instantly. Among them, the dense express parcels in the thumbnail of the goods are very eye-catching. "Shoot a shot 50!" "Good goods!" ...... These promotions are prominently marked by merchants in red font.
Help Jun backstage contact the store to ask, is these couriers lost or unclaimed by others? The customer service replied:
No, it's packed yourself.
The other side bluntly said that this is a "decompression game" and "mainly entertainment".
Subsequently, Hejun placed orders in 3 stores and purchased 3 "express blind boxes", spending a total of 92.4 yuan. After about 3 days, 3 bulky packages were received. Cut open the outer packaging, and what comes into view is a large bag of "express blind box". There are 100 pieces! Spread straight out, the two tables were quickly filled. But helping Junshi to dismantle found that among these 100 goods, there is nothing that can really "value the fare".
Express blind box after disassembly of the item
Among them, there are 17 packs of napkins, 6 bottles of nail polish, 19 bags of hand cream, 5 parts of activated charcoal bamboo charcoal packets, 4 boxes of laundry detergent and several business card holders... Help Jun query found that the wholesale price of napkins is 0.5 yuan a pack, nail polish 1 yuan a can, bamboo charcoal bag 3 yuan 2 packs... It is estimated that the total price is about 42 yuan, and even less than half of the actual purchase costs.
These goods are almost all "shoddy": the nail polish cover cannot be unscrewed at all, a hole in the bamboo charcoal bag is broken, the laundry detergent is leaky...
Dirty! Dirty!
Where does the information come from
When he helped Jun to dismantle these 100 couriers, his hands were already "ink black". At this time, it was found that the outer packaging of the "express blind box" was full of dirt and even attached to the silt.
Dismantle and cut the blind box of the courier
Help Jun also noticed a detail, in all the "express blind box" outer packaging bags, there are corresponding "recipient" and "delivery address".
Where does all this information come from? Was it made up by the merchant, or is it something that really happened? He asked the customer service of the two stores about this, but as of press time, he had not received any response.
Live sightings
Blind boxes, also known as "surprise toys", originated in Japan, and initially appeared in the form of lucky bags, gachas, etc., but the value was often higher than its list price. Never knowing which one will be drawn before opening it, the uncertainty of unpacking stimulates the consumer's nerves. However, the deformed consumption caused by the "blind box fever" due to addiction psychology has been questioned. To this end, help Jun's online and online multi-party investigation.
Smash the gold! Smash the gold!
"Gamble" hundreds of thousands
When it comes to the elders of the domestic blind box marketing model, it is absolutely necessary to mention Bubble Mart, an IP brand born 11 years ago, for the first time to bring the blind box into the sight of many young people in China.
Helping Jun came to the Bubble Mart store at Raffles City in Shanghai People's Square, and looked out from the doorway, mostly young girls. Facing the dazzling shelves, they intently pulled out blind boxes, put them in their ears and shook them carefully, listening to the sounds and identifying objects and thinking. In addition to being able to buy in stores, players can also buy at vending machines and online platforms in street malls.
Vending machines and online platforms in street malls
Most of the conventional blind boxes in the store are generally priced at 59 or 69 yuan, which is much higher than the price of toys similar to their materials and volumes. These blind boxes are generally divided into 12 groups, packed into a large box on the shelf, above the glass cover display toy samples, consumers can not directly buy the desired style, but can only be randomly purchased in the shelves of 12 blind boxes.
On-store shelves
After some careful selection, some players will buy a blind box item, and some players will buy 5 or 10 at a time. Many of them paid for a blind box and then disassembled it on the spot, and then turned back to the shelf to open a new round of selection...
Many young players are happy with the "gambling style" blind box play, and they can't stop at all.
At the scene, a self-proclaimed "Bubble Mart loyal member" Ms. Gu told the helper that players like to call their purchase of blind boxes as "into the pit", the selection of blind boxes, the removal of blind boxes, the display of blind boxes have become a "sense of ceremony", the existence of hidden models, limited models, will let them experience the pleasure of gambling in consumption, stimulate them to continue to repurchase.
The circle is known as "smoking blind box for a while, has been smoking has been cool" ridicule, in order to get the desired blind box, many people continue to smash gold, my friend has spent hundreds of thousands of yuan to consume blind boxes.
The hot bubble mart, the ultra-high premium of the second-hand hidden blind box, has also attracted a lot of scalpers to participate in the nuggets.
Driven by the desire to collect and the thrill of surprises, blind box players are eager to have their favorite toys. But the blind box game that relies entirely on the hand, some people "hit a shot", and there are always people who can't play and win. Ms. Gu said that even if she often feels that her hand is not good, and she has drawn a lot of repetitive and disliked styles, she is still "more and more courageous in the Vietnam War". On the same day, she won the only one she didn't like in the new series, but after a brief regret, she said she would continue to buy the blind box of the series.
complaints! complaints!
More than 5,000 complaints
Ms. Shao, a citizen, calmly opened the blind box in front of the helper, and because she did not draw the hidden money she wanted, she could only return with sorrow. Before leaving, she told the helper:
After I "entered the pit" blind box, I spent about 50,000 yuan before and after, and the family really couldn't pile it up, and also specially customized a blind box display cabinet for display.
Driven by the blind box fever in recent years, Bubble Mart has achieved rapid expansion with the "Molly" series of IP, and there are currently 85 IP operated by the company, and countless "Molly" have brought traffic to Bubble Mart, and also let fans spend a lot of money.
However, the fanaticism of fans cannot hide the problems behind the product. Help Jun searched on the Internet and found that there were nearly 5,000 complaints about Bubble Mart, and many of them were complained about problems such as defective products and inadequate after-sales service.
Some consumers surnamed Li reported that the blind box doll she recently bought at Bubble Mart had a strong smell, which made people smell vomit at close range.
Today's products are significantly worse than previously bought.
Other consumers said:
Purchased a full box of 12 dimo pet vacation series blind boxes on the Taobao Bubble Mart flagship store. After opening the inspection, it was found that 10 of the 12 styles contained in the goods had different degrees of defects, either paint or cracks and other quality problems, and after-sales customer service communication hoped to return the refund, but the other party refused on the grounds that it did not support refunds!
In the evaluation area of the Tmall flagship store of Bubble Mart, it is not difficult to find that many customers have reported:
The product is defective when it is obtained, but the customer service response is "does not affect the placement".
Helper Jun noticed that most of the buyers who gave bad reviews were "repeat customers" of the store.
In the product detail page of Bubble Mart, there is a description of the product defect determination, which even specifies the light environment and light source distance.
■ For example, the identification criteria for defects in the range of the head are "at a distance greater than or equal to 50 cm, whether the defect is visible when viewing less than or equal to 5 seconds." ”
■ At the same time, it is said that the blind box products belong to special categories of goods and do not support the return and exchange of goods for seven days without reason.
Bubble Mart After-Sales Handling Policy
Expert opinion
In recent years, the "blind box +" business model with blind boxes as the center of fission has rapidly fermented, archaeological blind boxes, stationery blind boxes, beauty blind boxes, snack blind boxes, express delivery blind boxes, book blind boxes... Many consumer sectors have set off a blind box wind for goods. For a time, the blind box became a "magic box", and the versatile blind box marketing was tried and tested.
At the beginning of this year, the China Consumer Association issued a consumer tip:
■ There are four main problems in the blind box market: excessive marketing, suspected false publicity, difficulty in quality assurance, and difficulty in resolving disputes;
■ Operators should work hard from the product itself, do not blindly rub the marketing heat of the blind box, win the immediate benefits, but lose the long-term reputation.
What is the problem behind the blind box? In this regard, He Bangjun interviewed Shi Weilei, professor of strategy at Shanghai Advanced School of Finance of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Huang Huang of Shanghai Municipal Consumer Rights and Interests Protection Committee.
lottery! lottery!
Causes deformed consumption
Professor Shi Weilei believes that from the analysis of consumption patterns and consumer psychology, the blind box economy is the concentrated performance of businesses catering to the current young consumers' tendency to uncertainty psychological preferences.
The "magic" of the blind box lies in the lottery sales model.
Some players spend thousands of dollars to buy hundreds of blind boxes at a time, only for a limited edition hidden model. Shi Weilei pointed out that consumers are addicted to playing blind boxes and are "designed" by merchants. Blind box hidden models are extremely active in the second-hand market, and the premium often reaches tens of times. Players do not hesitate to continuously "end boxes" one box at a time, but still cannot draw the "hidden model" with a very low probability. It is through the rarity of hidden money that merchants use the betting mode of low draw rate (or drop rate) as a means to lift the impulse of "deformed consumption". The physical value of the hidden model itself is not high, and the various limited editions are just the merchants "creating" the imbalance between supply and demand by controlling the output to achieve the purpose of marketing hype.
Shi Weilei said that the opening of the blind box has the characteristics of "easy to learn, fast addiction, and slow subsidence". In addition to probabilistic rewards from hidden models, there are also merchants who co-brand with well-known IPs.
■ Through various marketing means to constantly "brush the sense of existence";
■ Through sharing, discussion, exchange and other ways with players, it evokes consumers' collection psychology and showing off psychology, and stimulates consumers' motivation and desire to buy.
Among consumers, especially young people, they are curious, like to compare, and their consumption concepts are not yet sound, and they are very prone to "addiction".
The commercial moral hazard exposed by the gradual amplification of the blind box is also becoming more and more concerned by the public, such as the killing behind the blind box, hoarding, false publicity, etc., as well as the merchants clear the goods in the name of the blind box, shoddy, false and true, the essence has constituted commercial fraud.
Shi Weilei emphasized:
Blind box as a new economic form, in addition to guidance, supervision can not be missing, purify the blind box economic chaos, through strong supervision to reduce the moral hazard of excessive commercial profit-seeking to the minimum.
Stuffy bags! Stuffy bags!
Marketing is shoddy
Huang Huang told The Helper that as the competition in the blind box market becomes more and more fierce, excessive commercialization brings different degrees of consumption risks, and the controversy of "whether the blind box is a commodity or a sales model" has also brought more difficulties to supervision.
First of all, the probability of hidden models in blind boxes may affect consumers' right to know. At present, most blind box companies do not explicitly indicate the probability of hidden money extraction, and there are few active prompts in the purchase process. Blind box companies may stimulate underage consumers to buy repeatedly by controlling the amount of hidden money, breeding deformed consumption.
Secondly, the scarcity of blind box hidden models may induce "speculative traps" and "speculative box industry chain". Through the search of platforms such as "Tide Play family", "idle fish" and "Thousand Islands", it was found that there was no shortage of blind boxes hidden for thousands of yuan or even tens of thousands of yuan. "Scalpers" buy blind boxes in large quantities, get more opportunities to draw hidden money, and then sell them at a higher price. What's more, some blind box companies directly participate in the second-hand market trading, which is a market maker behavior that provides immediacy and liquidity for the market.
■ On the one hand, blind box enterprises participate in the price manipulation of the secondary market, which not only destroys the formation mechanism of the price of blind box products in the secondary market, but also undermines the pricing strategy of unified operation.
■ On the other hand, blind box enterprises participate in second-hand transactions, especially high-priced acquisitions of hidden funds, which forms a closed loop of low-price sales and then high-priced repurchases in the second-hand market by means of a certain probability, so as to stimulate the speculative psychology of consumer purchases.
Third, the blind box derived from a doll commodity into a "boring bag" marketing model. Many enterprises have seen the blind box dividend and have laid out the "blind box business". However, commodity blind boxes, generally hold the thinking of making quick money, often through low-cost marketing means, rubbing the marketing heat of blind boxes, stimulating consumer gambling psychology, using the sales characteristics of blind boxes "boring bags", in order to reduce costs and damage the interests of consumers in exchange for maximizing benefits. Especially as the blind box economy shifts from offline to online, the degree of difficulty in consumer rights protection has become greater, and the sale of counterfeit and shoddy products "shoddy" has become more and more intense.
In this regard, the Shanghai Municipal Consumer Protection Commission made suggestions:
■ First, accelerate the study and promotion of legislation and regulations on the market norms of blind boxes, and establish and improve a third-party supervision mechanism for the amount of hidden funds and the probability of extraction of blind boxes;
■ The second is to strengthen the supervision of the blind box market, and severely crack down on market maker behavior, infringement and piracy, counterfeiting and shoddy products, etc.;
■ The third is to strengthen the quality supervision of blind boxes of commodities, and carry out comparative tests, sampling surveys, comprehensive evaluations and other projects in a timely manner, so as to ensure good quality.
Related Links
In this so-called "national carnival", how many blind boxes are touching the bottom line of the law and infringing on the rights and interests and privacy of individuals? And let's count them one by one.
Currency blind box
Some are "disguised" as "ancient coins" from the flea market, and some even directly use the circulating renminbi as a commodity. Merchants claim to be able to "open" a "big harvest" at a low price.
Coin blind box
On August 23 this year, in order to standardize the trading of RMB paper coins and related commodities and strengthen supervision, the Chinese Min min bank, the State Administration for Market Regulation and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange jointly issued the "Draft for Comments on RMB Trading and Related Management Regulations". It clearly states:
Renminbi commemorative coins, renminbi that have ceased circulation, and renminbi bound goods approved by the Chinese Bank before the cancellation of the "Binding and Circulation Renminbi Approval" may be bought and sold, and the circulating Renminbi other than ordinary commemorative coins may not be bought and sold.
Pet blind box
This kind of "live blind box" mainly sells dogs, cats, birds, turtles, etc. Merchants ship by courier and do not provide any certificate of conformity for quarantine.
According to Article 33 of the Detailed Rules for the Implementation of the Postal Law:
In addition to complying with the special regulations of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications and ensuring safety, it is forbidden to send or carry all kinds of live animals in the mail, and due to the lack of necessary vaccination, the survival and transportation environment is harsh, which is very easy to cause live death.
Luxury blind box
Previously, the "LV blind box" wind prevailed throughout the country, and the price ranged from 88 yuan to 168 yuan. With "tail orders" and "clearances" as gimmicks, a small "LV" iconic box is randomly filled with items such as issuing cards, keychains, bracelets, necklaces, card bags, etc.
Trademark infringement, counterfeit goods rampant... "OEM" and "labeling" have become the usual routines of these blind boxes. At such a low price, it is almost impossible to buy genuine licensed goods, which has become the "hardest hit area" of counterfeiting and shoddy products.
Off-single blind box
Grasping the psychology of "seeking fate" and "finding the other half of life", the so-called "single blind box" came into being, only need to pay the corresponding price, you can remotely deliver or be extracted by others.
If participants provide their names, contact information, ID numbers, etc., it is very easy to cause personal privacy to leak and even be used by criminals. At the same time, as an intermediate platform, obtaining information from others and selling it has been suspected of violating the law. Where the circumstances are serious, they will be investigated for criminal responsibility for the crime of selling or illegally providing citizens' personal information.
Help Nong's studio
Planning | Qian Junyi
Text | Xu Chi, Lu Changqing, Wang Jun
Photography | Tao Lei Network
Edit | Gu Yue Qian Junyi Yao Chujie