The Labubu Company Just Certified a Gaming Handheld—With the U.S. FCC

Excerpt: Pop Mart, the Hong Kong-listed collectibles giant behind Labubu, registered as a US Federal Communications Commission equipment-authorization grantee in August 2026. Two months later, on October 9, 2026, the agency granted its supply-chain subsidiary a certification for a wireless device the paperwork names "THE MONSTERS Shake A Drink Gaming Handheld." No games outlet has reported it.

The short version

There is a paper trail, and it runs through a database almost nobody in gaming reads.

• On 2026-10-09, the Federal Communications Commission's equipment-authorization system issued FCC ID 2BXTT-092606004 to Pop Mart Supply Chain (Guangdong) Co., Ltd., for a device whose description reads, verbatim: "THE MONSTERS Shake A Drink Gaming Handheld." OBSERVED FACT.
• The grantee behind that number, grantee code 2BXTT, registered in the FCC database on 2026-08-20 and holds exactly one FCC ID — the one above. OBSERVED FACT.
• The device carries two radios: Bluetooth Low Energy at 2.402–2.480 GHz, and near-field communication at 13.56 MHz. The application is filed as a "Composite Device." OBSERVED FACT.
• "THE MONSTERS" is the Pop Mart intellectual-property family that contains Labubu, the character that made Pop Mart one of the most valuable consumer-toy companies on earth. OBSERVED FACT.
• Searches of English- and Chinese-language news, plus the enthusiast and hardware press, return no coverage of a Pop Mart gaming handheld. OBSERVED FACT (novelty search, 2026-10-11).

Put plainly: the company that sells the world's hottest collectible has quietly taken the first regulatory step toward selling a gaming device in the United States. The FCC record does not say whether it is a serious platform or a novelty. It does say the device is real enough to certify.

What the record actually contains, field by field

Everything below is read directly from the FCC equipment-authorization record (FCC ID 2BXTT-092606004) and its published grant. OBSERVED FACT unless marked otherwise.

Two of those fields do quiet work.

The responsible-party email is @popmart.com, and the record lists popmart.com as a related domain — the regulatory applicant is a corporate relation of Pop Mart, not a lookalike. OBSERVED FACT.

The long-term confidentiality request means the most interesting documents — the block diagram, the schematic, and the operational description — are not public. So the record proves the device exists, is a composite Bluetooth-plus-NFC machine, and was certified by an SGS test house. It does not, on its own, describe what the machine does. OBSERVED FACT about the filing; the limits are stated in the next-to-last section.

Why the name is the whole story

"THE MONSTERS" is not a generic label. It is the Pop Mart IP line from which Labubu emerged — the character created by Kasing Lung, brought into Pop Mart's stable in 2019, and the engine of a sales explosion that made Pop Mart a Hong Kong-listed phenomenon (ticker 9992.HK). Labubu figures sold in enormous volume through 2025, and the IP line carrying it became the single largest driver of the company's revenue. OBSERVED FACT.

A "Gaming Handheld" bearing the THE MONSTERS name therefore reads, on the record, as a Labubu-branded portable game device — the character's first appearance in a US equipment-authorization filing of any kind. INFERENCE (the record names the IP family; that the physical device is Labubu-branded follows from the product name, not from a photograph, which is withheld).

The radios are the tell

The device pairs two specific technologies: Bluetooth Low Energy and 13.56 MHz NFC.

Bluetooth LE is unremarkable; almost every modern handheld has it. NFC at 13.56 MHz is the interesting one. In the portable-gaming world, NFC is not a connectivity convenience — it is the technology of the physical-to-digital toy, the thing that lets a handheld read a plastic figure or a card you place against it. It is the radio that Skylanders, Disney Infinity, Nintendo's Amiibo and the Pokémon trading-card games all built their loops on. OBSERVED FACT that the device carries 13.56 MHz NFC; INFERENCE that a collectible company would intend the NFC for figure- or card-interaction.

That reading is a hypothesis, not a finding. The schematic and operational description that would confirm it sit behind the confidentiality request. But the combination — a collectibles manufacturer, an IP name from its flagship character family, and an NFC reader in a handheld certified for the US market — is the signature of a toys-to-life product, or of a companion device that reads physical Labubu merchandise. INFERENCE. Confidence: 55. The record cannot settle it, and no public document does.

Who filed it — and the pattern that repeats

The applicant is not "Pop Mart." It is Pop Mart Supply Chain (Guangdong) Co., Ltd. — the company's supply-chain arm, registered in Shenzhen. OBSERVED FACT.

This matters because it repeats a pattern this desk has documented before. When a branded handheld reaches the US market, the entity that signs the FCC paperwork is often not the brand on the box but a manufacturing or supply-chain subsidiary in the Pearl River Delta. We saw the same structure with a Lenovo-branded handheld that was certified twice in 2026 under two different Chinese contract manufacturers while Lenovo's own grantee codes appeared in neither filing. Here, the structure is a variation: Pop Mart does not disclaim the brand, but it does route the regulatory obligation through a supply-chain entity rather than the listed parent. OBSERVED FACT (both filings); INFERENCE (that the two share an ODM-origin logic).

The record also shows a US agent (Baihetian Innovative Solutions) and a US test-house chain (SGS North America as TCB). That is now standard apparatus for a Chinese applicant seeking US equipment authorization, and it tells you Pop Mart did this by the book rather than through a grey-market channel. OBSERVED FACT.

What this does not prove

The honest limits matter more than the find.

• The existence of the device, its radios, its applicant and its grant date are OBSERVED. The nature of the product — toy, companion device, or game platform — is not established by anything in the public record. SPECULATION would be to call it a "Labubu handheld console"; I do not.
• An FCC equipment authorization is a radio certification. It is not a statement of intent to ship, sell, price, or distribute in the United States. Plenty of certified devices never reach a US shelf. OBSERVED FACT about the mechanism.
• No unit volumes, launch window, retail channel or price are disclosed. OBSERVED FACT.
• The device description string may be marketing shorthand chosen by the applicant; "Gaming Handheld" is Pop Mart's own wording in the filing, not an FCC classification. OBSERVED FACT (it appears in the applicant-supplied device-description field).
• Whether the underlying platform is Android, a bespoke Linux, or a locked novelty cannot be determined from the withheld exhibits. OBSERVED FACT about what is not public.

Two other explanations, both live

A finding this thin demands that I state the alternatives against which it competes.

Alternative 1 — a promotional novelty. The device may be a branded trinket: a Bluetooth speaker with a screen, a blind-box companion that lights up, or a limited-run collectible sold at an exhibition. On that account the "Gaming Handheld" label is aspirational marketing and there is no console-industry story here at all. This cannot be excluded. SPECULATION, but a serious rival.

Alternative 2 — an IP-diversification move timed to a downdraft. Pop Mart's valuation has been volatile: after a blockbuster run the share price fell sharply as investors questioned whether Labubu demand was durable, and the company has been under pressure to prove there is more to it than blind boxes. A certified handheld is exactly the kind of non-figurine hardware a collectible company would test to widen its revenue base. SPECULATION with a documentary basis (the reported market-value decline); it is a motive, not evidence, and I do not treat it as proof.

Both alternatives are consistent with everything the FCC record shows, which is why the confidence in this piece rests on the existence and provenance of the filing, not on the size of the device behind it.

Why it still matters

Strip away the speculation and one durable fact remains: a consumer-IP company whose flagship character is worth more than most game studios has filed a US certification for a gaming handheld. OBSERVED FACT.

That is a leading indicator of a kind this desk watches on purpose. Equipment authorizations surface months before announcements, are indexed by manufacturer rather than brand, and are read by almost nobody in the games press. A filing like 2BXTT-092606004 does not tell you what Pop Mart will launch. It tells you what it has already decided is worth the cost of certifying — and it puts the Labubu franchise on a short list of non-gaming brands moving toward handheld hardware.

If a physical-figure Labubu game does reach the US market, the FCC record proves the plan was in motion by the second week of October 2026, in a Shenzhen supply-chain filing that no one reported.

Sources

• FCC equipment-authorization record, FCC ID 2BXTT-092606004 (grantee: Pop Mart Supply Chain (Guangdong) Co., Ltd.; granted 2026-10-09): https://fccid.io/2BXTT-092606004
• FCC grantee registration page, grantee code 2BXTT (registered 2026-08-20; one FCC ID): https://fccid.io/2BXTT
• Labubu — character, creator and Pop Mart relationship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labubu
• Pop Mart International Group Ltd. (9992.HK) quote and profile: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/9992.HK/
• "Pop Mart: Labubu firm sees profit soaring by at least 350%" — BBC News: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg85e0v5vyo
• Pop Mart first-half 2025 revenue (+204% year on year, RMB 13.88bn) and THE MONSTERS concentration: https://www.ukiyo-journal.com/article/popmart-labubu-slowdown-marketcap-2trn-20250917
• Prior LostInConsoles investigation into brand-versus-contract-manufacturer FCC filings (Lenovo GO2): https://fccid.io/2BHNR-LENOVOG02