The one thing I actually wanted was sold out.
After lunch, straight on through the mall
We ate pad thai and then walked on into ICONSIAM. The atrium is lit purple, with a spiralling form climbing away above you.
At the time our family was collecting Labubu. I knew there was a POP MART in the building, so stopping there was in the plan from the start.
There was a queue outside
There was a line outside the shop when we got there. So it is the same in Bangkok, I thought. The scene, and the look of the people standing in it, is barely different from what I see in Japan.
Inside, boxes on yellow and green shelves. Customers pick one up and hesitate over it. Same as Japan, again.
The one I came for was gone
The result, plainly: I could not buy the thing I wanted. The plush type that clips onto a bag like a keyring. Sold out.
I had a small hope that stock might circulate differently in a shop abroad. In practice, the popular ones go first wherever you are.
And still we bought plenty
We did not walk out empty-handed. I laid the day’s haul out in the hotel room and photographed it a little after ten at night — something fluffy in the middle, boxes stacked around it.
When one thing is missing, you remember the trip. Complete the set and the memory goes flat, I find.
One update, if you are going now
The shop I queued at is not the shop that is there today. On 31 August 2025 — days after this visit — POP MART opened its Global Landmark Store on the 7th floor of ICONSIAM: over 760 square metres across two connected levels, billed as the largest POP MART in the world, with the first POP MART Café outside China. If you are planning a visit, that is what you will find, and it is worth allowing more time than I did.
Notes from this visit
- POP MART inside ICONSIAM, Bangkok. On our day there was a queue outside the store
- Yellow and green shelving inside; the choose-a-box format is no different from the Japanese stores
- The plush type that clips to a bag as a keyring was sold out
- Assume the popular moulds sell out first locally too
- We stopped by a little after 1:30 in the afternoon
- POP MART opened its Global Landmark Store on ICONSIAM’s 7th floor on 31 August 2025 — over 760 m², the world’s largest, with a café. That is the store you will visit today, not the one described above
- Stock and range shift enormously by season
Visited August 2025. Stock and store details change; the landmark-store note reflects information published at the time of writing.
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