Channapatna, barbies and now labubu: What our dolls say about us

India Today

a day ago

When I was seven, my best friend wasn't human. She had no eyebrows, a bobbled head, and wore a hand-stitched lehenga made from an old dupatta. Every Sunday, I'd gather all my dolls-Channapatna wooden ones with clacking limbs, a bald plastic baby from Chandni Chowk, and that one prized Barbie knockoff-and host elaborate tea parties. My mother's steel katoris doubled as cups, Parle-Gs became biscuits, and the dolls sat in perfect formation, waiting for gossip and imaginary chai. We didn't have Pinterest-perfect dollhouses or curated Instagram shelves. Our dolls lived in shoeboxes. They travelled in schoolbags. They wore mismatched earrings made from fevicol and sequins. Most importantly, they were ours-silent witnesses to our dreams, dramas, and the days we wished we were grown-ups.advertisementCut to 2025-and things have gotten... weird.Today's kids and increasingly, young adults-aren't playing with dolls. They're collecting them. Enter Labubu: a bug-eyed, snaggle-toothed, slightly creepy creature with the cult appeal of a K-pop idol and the resale value of a Supreme hoodie. Born in the art labs of Hong Kong and sold through limited-edition "blind boxes," Labubu isn't made for tea parties. He's made for shelfies, unboxings, and envy-soaked Instagram Reels.
Forget pink ball gowns and tiaras-Labubu wears skull-hoodies, devil horns, and an expression that says "I bite." And yet, Gen Z has embraced him like a totem. He's strange, edgy, and oddly adorable in a voodoo-doll-meets-mushroom-spirit sort of way. The shift is stark: from dolls that mimicked real life to dolls that reflect a surreal inner world. If our dolls were stand-ins for the people we aspired to become, Labubu is more like a plushy moodboard-part monster, part meme, part misunderstood alter ego.advertisementWhat happened to innocence? To hand-lathe toys and monsoon tea parties? Maybe nothing. Maybe, just like us, our dolls grew up-and got weirder.THE CLICK-CLACK OF WOODEN ANKLETS CHILDHOOD IN CHANNAPATNA
Long before plastic turned playrooms neon-pink, Indian childhoods rang with the woody clatter of Channapatna dolls. In Karnataka's 'Gombegala Ooru' (Toy Town), artisans still spin hale-wood on hand-lathes, rubbing sticks of vegetable lac until the grain gleams like honey. The craft—patronised by Tipu Sultan in the late-18th century and protected today by a Geographical Indication tag—has survived wars, cheap imports and, lately, algorithmic childhoods.For 1980s and early-'90s kids, a Channapatna doll was more than a souvenir; it was the guest of honour at every bed-sheet tea-party. Fabric scraps became sarees, bindis were punched from notebook labels, and the doll sat primly while we poured imaginary chai from a plastic Milton flask. Play was slow, tactile and, in hindsight, wonderfully analog."When you dress a wooden doll, you're putting a story on a blank slate," recalls 52-year-old Bengaluru homemaker Meera K., who still keeps her lacquered couple in a glass case. Yet even in Toy Town, change was brewing. A 2024 field survey found only 1,500 full-time artisans left-and most of their children dream of coding bootcamps, not chisels. ENTER BARBIE: PINK PLASTIC & ASPIRATIONAL PLAY
In March 1986, Barbie sashayed into Indian toy stores-initially an import for NRIs returning from the Gulf, soon a must-have at every kiddie birthday. Mattel localised fast: by 1992 we had "Navratri Barbie" in ghagra-choli, and later Katrina-Kaif-endorsed Bollywood Barbies.The 2023 Barbie film super-charged that nostalgia. The movie grossed ?1.44 lakh crore globally, spawned 100+ brand tie-ups, and spiked U.S. Barbie toy sales by 25 per cent within two months of release. Indian metros turned pink: cafs threw "Barbie-core" nights; college fests hosted best-dressed Kens and Barbies. Even Mattel's CEO admitted India is "one big collaboration we're courting next".But something subtle shifted. Our childhood dolls were props in stories we wrote; Barbie came with a biography, a Malibu Dreamhouse and a social-media afterlife. "Play began to look outward," says Delhi psychologist Dr Vandana Rao. "Children stopped serving the doll tea and started serving her content."advertisementTHE GEN Z PIVOT: LABUBU & THE RISE OF "VOODOO-CUTE"
Fast-forward to 2025. The hottest doll on Instagram is Labubu-a gremlin-like, nine-toothed sprite born in Hong Kong artist Kasing Lung's sketchbook and mass-marketed by China's Pop Mart. With blind-box drops, 1-in-720 chase figures, and celebrity boosts from Rihanna to Dua Lipa, Labubu turned Pop Mart's revenue into a HK$310 billion juggernaut and pushed plush sales up 1,200 per cent last year. Walk through any Gen Z hang-out in Mumbai or Seoul and you'll spot a Labubu key-chain dangling off a Balenciaga tote. The aesthetic is a deliberate "ugly-cute": stitched scars, jagged grin, gothic colourways. It is as far from Barbie's symmetry as Channapatna is from molded plastic, yet the core impulse-projecting identity onto a tiny companion-persists."Labubu feels like a pocket mascot for grown-up anxieties," says 23-year-old Pune collector Ananya Patil, who unboxes her blind-bags live on Twitch. "He's creepy-cute, just like adulthood."advertisementWHY DOLLS KEEP EVOLVING (AND WHY WE KEEP BUYING)
Economists call it the "Play-Value Arc": as disposable incomes rise, toys evolve from utility (rattles) to identity tokens (collectibles). Social media accelerates the cycle-every new doll comes with a built-in fandom and a secondary market. A 2025 StockX report ranks Pop Mart above Nike in daily trades. THE COUNTER-CURRENT: WOODEN TOYS 2.0Ironically, Barbie's sustainability pledges (100 per cent recycled plastics by 2030) echo the very virtues Channapatna never lost. A rising eco-parent cohort is now buying back into wooden toys-sometimes commissioning artisans to carve custom figures that nod to contemporary pop culture (think Spider-Man in lac-red and indigo).Start-ups like Bengaluru's "Toylogue" blend Channapatna techniques with Montessori principles and ship worldwide. In 2024, their turnover doubled, helped by EU regulations on micro-plastics in kids' products. FULL-CIRCLE CUPS OF TEASo, where does that leave the next generation? Perhaps at a crossroads where the sound of a spinning lathe meets the ping of an app notification announcing the next blind-box drop. Yet when eight-year-old Ira Sharma throws a tea-party for her Barbie in Gurgaon, she still invites a hand-painted Channapatna elephant as "chief guest." And on her backpack swings a miniature Labubu in bubble-wrap armour, waiting for its Instagram debut.advertisementPlay, after all, has always been a mirror. From lacquered wood to plastic glamour to voodoo-cute vinyl, dolls simply reflect the eras we grow up in-our hopes, our fears, our aesthetic rebellions. The tea set may be silicone now, the guest list more eclectic, but the ritual remains: we gather our little effigies, pour an imaginary brew, and practice being human.Picture credit: Generative AI by Vani Gupta - Ends