A tiny butt-naked baby with funny headwear. A fluffy monster with sharp teeth and mischievous eyes. A neon green glow-in-the-dark humanoid.

If you find any, or all, of these descriptions familiar, chances are you might be a blind box buyer. Sonny Angels, Smiskis and Labubus suddenly find themselves at the altar of pop culture, amplified by virality. Only now, they’re branded as the newest form of escapism for Gen Z.

I’m also not an exception to this craze. Just the other day in class, one of my classmates and I realized we had the same Labubus hanging on our backpacks.

While booming in popularity, blind boxes are not new. We all have seen, or begged for, those Gashapon capsules as kids.  My gamer friends know the thrill of opening a new item in a game, and almost every entertainment industry has its form of “blind boxes.”

Blind boxes are not only selling you an item, but an experience. It’s the feeling of guessing which one you might get. It’s tearing open the bag, looking away for the thrill. It’s getting the rare items and it’s getting the ones you don’t want. In psychology, this unpredictability is referred to as “reward prediction errors.”

However, this dopamine-inducing side of blind boxes is not the reason why we buy them. For many collectors, it’s a form of escapism.

Think about it–these boxes are filled with tiny, adorable, and silly collectibles, which are mostly affordable. Indulging in blind boxes doesn’t bring the same feeling of guilt as buying luxury items like designer handbags or jewelry. As children grow up to be young adults with the financial means to sustain this indulgence, blind boxes are the sweet and risk-free escape to childhood.

In a time when many Millennials and Gen Z youths find themselves struggling to navigate the job market, buying a house or even groceries, small luxuries like tiny blind boxes become their source of comfort and solace. From a consumer perspective, escapism is defined as any consumption behavior that distracts people from their main source of stress.

Blind boxes can also bring a sense of community. People buying and unboxing together bring friends closer, and content creators also build a community online from their purchases. While loneliness achieves epidemic status, this hobby proves to be more desirable than ever.

As I watch trinkets become part of the mainstream culture, I can’t help but wonder–will this backfire on us? And not much to my surprise, it has. 

According to Cognitive Market Research, the global Blind Box Toys market size was estimated at USD 14 billion, out of which North America held the major market share of more than 40% of the global revenue. Videos of people pouring thousands of dollars into buying boxes in bulk for content flood my For You Page. The premise of escapism suddenly stops tasting so sweet.

Similar to every microtrend that once dominated the Internet (i.e., water bottles, soccer jerseys), I fear the day these collectibles will find their way into landfills once a newer, shinier alternative arises. Not only will it not solve the real-world problems that stress us out, but these plastic toys will fuel the environmental disaster that Gen Z-ers are trying to run away from.

How do we measure overconsumerism? How much is too much? Not all trends are bad, and collecting as a hobby has existed much longer than blind boxes have. However, we must ask ourselves what we are getting out of this collection.

Mindful purchasing is the antithesis of overconsumption. When you carefully consider a purchase, you make room for it in your life, and therefore, when the purchase happens, it serves a long-lasting purpose.

When buying a new blind box, you must ask yourself why you’re making this purchase. If you’re just buying one Labubu to put on the new school bag you got for Christmas, you’re probably not overconsuming. However, if you’re buying blind boxes to fill a void in your soul, maybe put the box down and question if you’re spending money just to spend.

Many subculture groups have used trinkets as a way of signifying community and a sense of personal style as part of their identity. They use these items for a distinct reason. You don’t need to commit to a subculture, but maybe we can learn from communities that have grown with trinkets for longer periods.