Mediascape Contra-Flow in Popular Culture: Pop Mart Blind Box As a Case Study

Among contemporary youth, blind boxes have gained popularity. These are gambling merchandise, whose toys remain unknown until opened. Although blind boxes originated as Japanese ACGN byproducts, Chinese toymaker Pop Mart created a successful popular mediascapes that has surpassed the original industry in profit and scale. The shift challenges the cultural dominance of developed countries (Straubhaar, 2010).

This study revisits global cultural flow (Appadurai, 1986) and the translation involved in glocalization (Tsing, 2015), applying the cultural transduction framework of market, product, people, and process (Uribe-Jongbloed&Espinosa-Medina, 2014). While the framework effectively examines global transfer and translation, it overlooks frictions and power dynamics in the global cultural economy. To bridge this gap, I incorporate the notion of contra-flow (Thussu, 2006) to provide a more comprehensive analysis.

By articulating the transferring process of the blind box from Japan to China, this study explores how the contra-flow of mediascape is generated and worked, regarding both producer and consumer sides. Thus, this study analyzes the Pop Mart blind box as a case and conducts interviews with 10 consumers and staff.

Pop Mart diversifies its blind box toys and cultivates a cosmopolitan image to mitigate political risks by partnering with globally recognized IPs and developing its own. This strategy creates a shared symbolic value between producers and consumers, connecting them through modern consumer culture. However, as a popular gambling-oriented commodity, the allure of blind boxes lies in their continuous creation of novelty, which simultaneously erodes consumers' established habits.

The contra-flow becomes a bricolage tailored to the demands of commercial logic, often at the expense of national identity. While contra-flow may represent an economic success for developing countries, it also leads to the dissolution of cultural identification. The results challenge the optimistic narrative of cultural ascendancy in emerging nations, viewing it instead as a reproduction of commercial mediascapes.