Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Retailers
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that last week, President Donald Trump announced his chaotic plans to impose extensive tariffs on imported goods. Of course, clothing prices will be impacted. But what do the tariffs mean for the collectible knickknacks that serve as my current source of joy and happiness?
According to CNBC, toy prices could rise up to 50 percent. That includes the foreign collectibles that Gen Z is obsessed with, like Sonny Angels and Labubus. The former is created in Japan, which has been threatened with an additional 24 percent tariff on imports, while the latter is created in China, which has been threatened with one of the highest tariff rates of 54 (or 140? Who knows, every day is different!) percent. Thankfully, Jellycats, which are made in the United Kingdom and not the European Union, are only subject to the baseline 10 percent tariff.
When I first discovered Sonny Angels in 2023, I had no idea how much joy the colorful, chunky cherub toys would bring me. These days, my apartment is littered with them; they’re on my bookcase, on my nightstand, in my bathroom, and in my kitchen. I bought a handful when I traveled to Japan, and I’m gifted the toy for nearly every occasion by friends and family. Now, with the proposed tariffs hitting the markets at midnight tonight, consumers are worried their collectors’ habits may be impacted. “Tariffs are a personal attack on the trinket girlies,” one person wrote on Twitter, while others on TikTok are also expressing their outrage.
Sonny Angel and Labubu didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment about how tariffs may affect their pricing. In my own observation, prices for some of the regular Sonny Angel series have risen $1.25 since December; it’s unclear if that price hike is due to increased demand or other forces. Already, retailers charge anywhere from $10 to over $25 for these super-popular collectables. Pop Mart’s Labubus tend to be priced even higher than the typical Sonny Angel, and since they’re created in China, they will be taxed at a higher rate in Trump’s tariff regime, making it possible for more of that increased cost to be passed on to the customer. But since these are all blind boxes and collectibles, people already spend ample money on them — they often sell for double or triple the retail price on the resale market. So will the trinket girls really care if the price of their beloved knickknacks goes up even further? I’m just glad I have my current collection to tide me over.
