The IP Protecting the Hottest Gifts of 2025: Labubu Dolls, Fidget Toys and Lilo & Stitch Puppetronics

With another holiday season upon us, IPWatchdog is taking a stroll down the toy and gaming aisle to pick out this season’s gifts representing some of the more successful and unique IP stories. From major licensing deals spawning award-winning animatronic dolls to infringement lawsuits ensuring that U.S. consumers enjoy authentic versions of lovable anime characters, Santa will be slipping these gifts down the chimney this year thanks in no small part to the effective use of IP rights.

Immense Popularity of Labubu Plush Dolls Spawns Counterfeit Lawsuit in Central CA

A decade ago, Hong Kong-based artist Kasing Lung released the first title in his series of illustrated books titled The Monsters, heavily inspired by Norse mythology encountered by Lung during his childhood in the Netherlands. One of Lung’s characters, a furry sharp-toothed elvish creature named Labubu, has set off a global craze since officially licensed plush dolls made by Chinese toy company Pop Mart began sales in 2024. This August, Pop Mart announced a massive profit growth of 400% in the first six months of 2025 compared to 2024’s first half, with company CEO Wang Ning indicating publicly that the company should hit 30 billion yuan ($4.18 billion USD) in sales this year thanks in large part to Labubu dolls.

This June, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) registered trademarks filed by Pop Mart (Singapore) to the standard character mark “LABUBU” and an illustration with drawing including the words “THE MONSTERS,” with a large-eared elvish creature reclining atop those words. Beijing Pop Mart has also been active at the U.S. Copyright Office, filing applications this year to register figures in “The Monsters” series, as well as Timber Workshop keychains featuring Labubu. The massive popularity of Labubu has spawned a significant counterfeit market, leading to a Pop Mart lawsuit filed this July in the Central District of California against 7-Eleven’s “Lafufu” knockoffs.

Crayola Protect Color-Wicking STEAM Art Kits Through Design, Utility Patents

Ever since selling its first colored wax crayon in 1903, Crayola has developed innovative art supply products that spark the creativity of young artists. From July to September of each year, Crayola’s facility in Easton, PA, creates 13 million crayons each day during its heaviest production period, which accounts for half of the company’s annual sales. The art supply company is no stranger to unique collaborations featuring its IP, this year announcing partnerships with Jones Soda, Marc Jacobs, Fla-Vor-Ice parent company Jel Sert, and SanDisk, which in October released a Crayola-branded flash drive. Last year, Crayola made major news in the intellectual property world when the company successfully registered the scent of its crayons as a trademark with the USPTO.

Crayola, which is owned by Hallmark Cards, was awarded several patents this year including U.S. Patent No. 12403720, which claims a kit for creating pixel artwork or designs that the company sells as part of its Wixels coloring sets. This October, Crayola was awarded U.S. Design Patent No. D1099212, which protects the ornamental design of another color-transfer wicking art kit Crayola markets as STEAM Paper Flower Science Kits. Crayola also continues to protect new colors through IP rights, and this year it registered a U.S. trademark to the standard character mark “HAZMAT ORANGE” for markers.

Disney Licensing Deal Leads to Toy of the Year Award for Stitch Puppetronic

The Toy Association is one of the major trade organizations representing manufacturers, licensors and hundreds of other companies making up the U.S. toy industry. This February, the Toy Association’s prestigious “Toy of the Year” award was awarded to RealFX, a robotics toy division within Wow! Stuff, for its Stitch Puppetronic featuring an officially licensed version of the mischievous but cute alien featured in Disney’s Lilo & Stitch franchise. In an October 2024 interview, Wow! Stuff’s President and Founder Richard North reflected that a team of engineers required a few dozen design iterations for the animatronic toy before they discovered the proper arrangement for the puppetry hand controls, resulting in a popular toy that sold out its first run in June 2024.

Recent design and utility patents granted to Wow! Stuff parent company China Industries claim innovative aspects of other products sold by the toymaker, like Nano Pods interconnectable collectible toys. For its part, Disney first filed to protect the “LILO & STITCH” standard character mark in 1999, three years before the franchise’s first film was released. This past March, Disney filed a trademark application to protect the standard character mark “LILO AND STITCH” in international class 41 for motion picture distribution.

Battlefield 6’s Record Sales Leads to Spate of Copyright Takedowns Over User Maps

Electronic Arts’ Battlefield series of military simulation games is incredibly popular among fans of first-person shooters. After releasing Battlefield 6 this past October, Electronic Arts announced that this most recent edition in its series broke several franchise records, including 7 million copies sold in three days, during which time 172 million matches were played online. This massive success for a series hounded by critics and fans alike for Battlefield 2042, released in November 2021, came days after Electronic Arts underwent a $55 billion leveraged buyout by venture capital firms led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund in a deal expected to lead to media crossovers for many of EA’s gaming brands.

Electronic Arts is an active U.S. trademark applicant and is listed as owner on 386 live or pending trademark registrations at the USPTO. Although the video game developer has registered trademarks for several titles in the series including Battlefield V and Battlefield 2042, Electronic Arts does not appear to have an active trademark application for its most recent installment. Battlefield 6’s Portal feature for user-created maps has spawned intellectual property squabbles as news reports indicate that Activision Blizzard, publisher of the bestselling Call of Duty franchise, has been issuing takedown notices against user maps mimicking famous Call of Duty maps.

New Generation of Fidget Toys Win Industry Recognition, STEAM Accreditation

Fidget spinners and other sensory toys have come into vogue over the past decade, with online search data showing interest in several types of fidget toys exploding since the COVID-19 pandemic. The fidget spinner, originally invented by Catherine Hettinger as a way of interacting with her daughter while suffering from myasthenia gravis, has not been patented and trademark applications claiming the toy’s name have reportedly faced genericide rejections because of the term’s wide usage.

Among the finalists for the Toy Association’s 2025 Specialty Toy of the Year was HEXEL, a fidget toy constructed from a series of interconnectable blocks developed by Danish toymaker Plus-Plus. Individual Plus-Plus blocks, which have a notched double-crossed pattern claimed by U.S. Design Patent D1048220, are strung together with a durable cord in a flexible arrangement to create HEXEL. Plus-Plus A/S registered the U.S. trademark for “HEXEL” on toy building blocks in May 2024, and in February 2021 obtained U.S. Patent No. 10926185 claiming a building block system with elongated portions connected to wheels allowing children to build vehicles from Plus-Plus blocks.

Another fidget toy designed to inspire imaginations is the Shashibo Cube, a three-time Toy of the Year finalist that in 2022 received a STEAM accreditation from Dr. Gummer’s Good Play Guide. Fun in Motion Toys, which sell Shashibo Cubes, is no stranger to unique licensing arrangements for its magnetic puzzle cubes with famous brands like Hello Kitty and Meow Wolf. Spinballs LLC, which rebranded to Fun in Motion Toys in 2017, registered the standard character mark for “SHASHIBO” with the USPTO in June 2019 in international class 28 for puzzles.