Why is Lotso so popular in China?

This is not Lotso. But that's chocolate behind him so I'm all in.

Lotso, the big pink strawberry-scented bear from Toy Story 3, is very popular in China and other Asian nations.

He's not popular here, seeing as how, as the villain, he tried to burn Woody and the gang in an incinerator and made me cry out loud during an animated film which is not a common thing for me.

This has become confusing for enough people that the search term has caught the attention of content farms who have happily generated AI content to provide some kind of BS answer. Now, whether you use a standard internet search or us an AI search tool (like Perplexity), the returns are self-feeding, promoting that content-farm information as reality.

That's one of the many problems of AI-generated content, that it begets more AI content as it is scraped, but it doesn't really answer the question of why Lotso is so popular.

A YouTuber named Cristophe took a fair swing at why Lotso is so popular in China, delving into three possible reasons:

1. He's cute.

2. He's cheaper to pay licensing fees for than other Disney characters.

3. It's the government-sanctioned response to replace Winnie the Pooh, which has become censored in China.

Christophe discovered that somewhere around 2022, searches on Lotso spiked on Google almost as much as when the movie first came out in 2010. On Baidu, China's main search engine, Lotso has ranked higher in search than Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and Winnie the Pooh.

He asked two content creators for Singapore who said that the reason was simple: he was cute. The Japanese term ("kawaii") means cute, and cute things are popular in Asia. And then they mentioned MINISO, a store that actually exists in the nearby mall that I've never gone into because I don't understand what it is and it seems so pastel and pink (which we'll get to in a minute). It's also mostly plastic, which is in conflict with my preference for paper.

But back to Lotso. And MINISO.

MINISO is a Chinese company, selling pop culture merchandise. They don't create their own characters, but instead rely on licensing intellectual properties that are popular, churning out products that are affordable, cute, and unique (often with big, dead eyes and huge heads, in my opinion). In particular, blind boxes are a thing, sort of like gambling for the underage or never-matured set. You buy the box or bag without knowing what is inside, sort of like ordering from fast food restaurants, and Bob's your uncle. However, people kept asking to exchange the character they had for Lotso.

Lotso, a big cuddly pink strawberry-smelling bear who tried to burn his friends.

MINISO is huge, and when they launched a Lotso-centric line of products, they probably made bank. At the end of 2021, they had a Lotso only launch. But Lotso had already been busy that year. According to Cristophe, a fashion brand had a Lotso-themed collaboration collection, so while MINISO wasn't the first, it might have been the tipping point that made the evil bear go viral.

Because who doesn't want to dress up in Pepto-Bismol pink and remember that one character who tried to burn his friends.

And I say that only partly in jest. Pink is a big deal in MINISO, though hopefully with different undertones than Victoria Secret's Pink line. It's worth noting that, when I made cupcakes, pink was the most popular frosting color and the first to sell out. There's something about red and pink.

I don't know enough about Asian culture to know if the image is the thing, or if the fact that the character is evil matters. I'd like to think the latter mattered here but I also can't get past Toy Story 4 in which Bo Peep Yoko-Ono-ed the band and was seen as a heroine by some in this country and therefore, in my book, just as there are only three Indiana Jones movies, there are only three Toy Story movies. Lin Jiawen, a Disney executive in Asia, explained the move towards Lotso in a speech and perhaps explained why the villain part doesn't matter.

Lotso had started out as a good toy, but was abandoned in the wilderness by his owner. When he made his way home, he discovered he'd been replaced and at that point, turned sinister (much like ex-spouses). But Disney Consumer Products still say potential in the embittered bear.

"Three years ago, my colleagues and I launched a series of Strawberry Bear-themed products and marketing activities," Jiawen explained. Lotso was a villain with only one movie, he said, but they would turn him into a popular character with personality who could make everyone's world smell like strawberries. I can only imagine that the Strawberry Shortcake characters from the 1970s and 1980s are now the replaced-and-embittered villains lurking somewhere to pounce.

Anyway, because massive MINISO made Lotso popular, that opened the door to smaller companies who might not be able to afford to license more popular Disney characters, but could afford to license Lotso (BECAUSE HE WAS THE VILLAIN!). They can get in on the trend and turn some profit.

Christophe interviewed a woman who explained that being able to create a meme is important in making something go viral. Since Winnie the Pooh was censored while Lotso was not, Lotso could be me made into memes.

Memes with an evil murdering bear, sure, but memes nonetheless.

Christophe's final take on the popularity of Lotso in China is that all three reasons (cute, cheap, censorship) have a role, but mostly, his popularity was planned at the top from the beginning. Planned virality. Planned obsession. Planned obsolescence (it's coming). A villain like Lotso became viral based on the maneuverings of giant corporations banking on pink, cute, and cuddly.

At the end of Toy Story 3, Lotso ends up tied to the front of a garbage truck. It's fitting, because most of these Lotso products will end up in a garbage truck.

P.S. Watch Christophe's video to the end, where he reveals the details on a lawsuit in which we come to discover that the billions of dollars made off of Lotso are based on a character Disney might not have had permission to use in the first place.