In July 2025, media and Telegram channels spread the news: a resident of the People's Republic of China was unable to purchase a popular toy and decided to commit suicide by jumping from one of the top floors of the shopping center. We have verified the accuracy of this story.
Publications about the tragic death of a Chinese woman spread on July 16. It is alleged that the girl was standing in line at the Labubu toy machine in one of the shopping centers, but there were so many people wanting to buy plush monsters that there was even a fight among them. When the girl realized that she would not get the toy, she committed suicide. The publications are accompanied by three videos allegedly filmed at the scene of the events: one shows a girl falling from a height, and two more show a scuffle with Labubu near a machine gun.
They wrote about the tragedy “Moskovsky Komsomolets", "Komsomolskaya Pravda", News.ru And "Constantinople", and one or several of the videos described above were published by Telegram channels "Ax+"(2.1 million views at the time of writing the analysis), "Dmitry Nicotin"(302,000), "UNIAN - Ukrainian news | war" (250,000), "Bad News 18+" (250,000), "Putin on Telegram"(160,000), "All-Seeing Eye 18+"(97,000), "drain rat"(82,000), etc.
Labubu are monster plush toys with bunny ears created in 2015 by artist Kasin Lun. They are produced by the Chinese company Pop Mart, and since 2019, the toys have been sold through vending machines in “secret boxes” - the buyer does not know what kind of monster he will get. At first, Labubu were popular mainly in Asia, but in recent years the hype around the toys has become widespread - in different countries there are huge queues for them, in which sometimes clashes occur. Pop Mart usually responds quickly to such situations - for example, the manufacturer temporarily confiscated its products from sale in the UK due to reports of fights between customers. Similar situations also occurred in South Korea And USA. At the same time, “Verified” did not find a reaction to the alleged suicide of a Chinese customer on the company’s website or social networks.
A reverse search of the screenshot of the video with the fallen girl showed that it appeared on the Internet on June 13, that is, a month before it went viral on the RuNet. Users X And Reddit published it with captions in Chinese: “In Guangzhou, due to a fight near Pop Mart, one person fell and died” or “On June 13 in Guangzhou, during a rush near Pop Mart, one person died, and resellers started a fight.” Most of the posts talk about the accident, not suicide. The comments also say that these videos were originally distributed on the Chinese platform WeChat.
Chinese media confirm incident. According to them, it happened late in the evening of June 12, but not in Guangzhou, but in the Babaiban shopping center in the city of Jiaxing in eastern China. Its interior matches the interior of the building from the viral video. The circumstances of the girl’s death are not specified in media publications, but sellers told reporters that the Pop Mart machine in their shopping center is located on the first floor. Accordingly, the customer could not have accidentally fallen from a great height due to the crowd of people at the Labubu selling point, as was stated in publications on social networks.
As for the videos with people fighting near the Pop Mart machine, in this case it is more difficult to determine the location of the shooting - in both cases, only certain interior details were captured in the video. At the same time, it is clearly visible that the two videos depict different people. In one, there is a confrontation between a girl and two men, and in the other, a woman is trying to separate several young men.
On June 13, the day after the death of the girl in the Babaiban shopping center, on the website news.sina.com A report was published about a fight at the Wuyue Plaza shopping center in Yangzhou, about three hours north of Jiaxing. It is reported that six young people entered the building before the opening and planned to buy all the toy boxes in the machine, probably to resell them later. As a result, a conflict arose between them and other buyers. The note does not contain any information about the girl who fell or jumped from one of the upper floors. Chinese media claim that video footage of this particular skirmish spread on the Internet in connection with the death of a girl in Jiaxing. However, “Verified” was unable to accurately determine whether at least one of the two videos was filmed in Wuyue Plaza.
The information that the girl in the video committed suicide because she did not get Labubu was spread mainly in Russian; there are also publications in Ukrainian. The first similar post that was found by “Verified” appeared July 15 at 08:25 Moscow time in the closed Telegram channel “Den of Tin 21+”. This channel specializes in videos that show acts of violence without censorship. Then the news spread through other closed channels with similar content, and on the night of July 16 published the “Bad News 18+” channel is publicly available, after which the videos went viral.
Thus, there is no evidence that the girl depicted in the video committed suicide when she could not buy a popular toy. With such captions, the video circulated mainly in Russian a month after the incident. At the same time, according to Chinese media, videos of fights near Pop Mart machines, published along with a video of a fallen girl, were filmed in a different location.
Cover photo: Instagram/popmart
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