Stella Huang bought her first Jellycat plush toy when she lost her job during the pandemic.

A school friend was a fan of the British-designed toys and told her all about them. But she only fell in love with the brand when she saw a gingerbread house plushie on the Chinese social media app RedNote.

Christmas is not widely celebrated in China and is more of a commercial event than anything more traditional. “The festival doesn’t mean a lot to me… But I always like the sight of gingerbread houses,” she says. It was then that she asked her friend in their hometown Guangzhou to buy it for her.

That was in 2021, just as Jellycat was about to make it big in China and around the world.

“Everyone felt jittery, and no-one knew what would happen,” says Stella, who has developed a habit of petting and squeezing her plushies since Covid. She had to spend a lot of time at her home, in Beijing, which had some of the strictest lockdowns in China, if not the world.

Now 32, Stella has a new job, as a sales manager in the tourism industry, but is still buying Jellycats. Her collection has grown to 120 toys, costing a total of about 36,000 yuan ($5,145; £3,815).

“At my age, there are many things you can’t share with others… and the troubles we face are a lot more complicated than before,” she says with a sigh. “The plushies help me regulate my emotions.”

Originally aimed at children, the squishy toys have become a global hit, especially in China where a disenchanted youth has been turning to them for comfort.

Stella’s Gingerbread house plushie is an “Amuseable”, a line of toys with tiny faces modelled on inanimate objects from toilet rolls to boiled eggs. The plushies are the “breakout products” which “appeal to a wide Gen-Z and millennial audience” around the world, says Kasia Davies of global analysis firm Statista.

The popularity of these toys “may have something to do with wanting to feel companiable”, Isabel Galleymore of the University of Birmingham, in the UK, says.

It is difficult to say for sure whether Jellycat started the now-iconic Amuseable line, which was launched in 2018, to tap into the young adult market. But toy manufacturers need to find a new market given the falling birth rate in much of the world, Ms Davies adds.

And as early as in 2015, Jellycat entered the Chinese market.

Having done the “groundwork”, the toy maker was able to capture “the tone of the pandemic” – when people sought comfort amid heightened uncertainty – and built on its success in China, says Kathryn Read, a business consultant with 15 years’ experience in China.

Jellycat’s popularity was further propelled by its pop-up experiences. The in-store events offer a menu of limited-edition “food”. Many fans film themselves being served and post the clips on social media.

Localisation has also been a core strategy for the Jellycat experience. Fans could buy stuffed toy versions of items like fish, chips and mushy peas at a temporary shop at the department store Selfridges in London.

Meanwhile, teapot and teacup plushies were among the items sold at special outlets in Beijing and Shanghai last year.

In 2024, the UK-based firm’s revenue rose by two-thirds to £333m ($459m), according to its most recent Companies House accounts. In the same period, it sold about $117m worth of toys to Chinese consumers on major e-commerce platforms, according to estimates by Beijing-based Moojing Market Intelligence.

The company’s growing popularity mirrors a wider boom in China’s collectable-toy market among young adults seeking emotional comfort and connection.

Overall sales of collectable toys in China are expected to top 110bn yuan this year, according to a 2024 report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the China Animation Association.

The runaway success of Labubu, the elf-like dolls created by Chinese toy maker Pop Mart, highlights the country’s growing appetite for collectable toys, especially among young people.

This “kidult” trend is not unique to China, as young adults around the world question “outdated understandings of adulthood”, says Prof Erica Kanesaka, a cultural expert at Emory University in the US.

Global toy sales fell in 2024 – albeit by less than 1% – but collectable toy sales rose by almost 5%, to a record high, according to market research company Circana.

Amuseables, especially the aubergine, which Chinese fans call “the boss”, have also spawned memes, with many sharing frustrations about adult life.

“Aubergine boss” is a hashtag on RedNote, where fans draw different expressions on the plushie. In these memes, the aubergine appears in various moods from drinking to fake-smiling.

For example, Wendy Hui from Hong Kong modified her aubergine Amuseable by drawing dark circles around its eyes and putting a pair of glasses on it. She then posted a picture of it on Threads with the caption: “The mental state of workers on Monday.”

“I kept working at home even when I was supposed to be off,” the 30-something marketing professional says. “I just wanted to express how exhausted I was.”

Jellycat has become an unexpected, light-hearted outlet for young Chinese people to air their grievances about a slowing economy, where hard work doesn’t guarantee comparable rewards. Despite heavy censorship, the internet has remained an important, if not the only, space for such conversations.

The brand also often launches limited-edition products and retires designs. The strategy, which many in China call “hunger marketing”, has also helped make Jellycat toys a favourite on social media in the country.

Collecting can feel like a treasure hunt, with fans combing department stores and independent shops for Jellycats when they travel overseas. Some resort to “daigou”, overseas-based shopping agents. And rare Jellycats, a status symbol among some fans, change hands for more than $1,400.

But most are cheap pick-me-ups amid a sluggish economy plagued by a property crisis and high local government debt. China’s youth unemployment rate has eased a little after hitting a record high in August, but official figures show it is still above 17%.

“You have to consider for a long time before buying a luxury bag,” 34-year-old medical sales representative Jessie Chen says. “But you don’t need to do that for a Jellycat.

“Jellycat also sells bags, which cost just a few hundred yuan [tens of US dollars]. They are practical and can hold a lot of things, so you might change the way you think about luxury goods.”

But China may have already reached peak Jellycat, with fans noticing less discussion about the toys on social media.

Ms Hui has turned to “blind boxes” of toys like Teletubbies – where customers only find out what they have bought when they open the package – as a more thrilling, and cheaper, alternative. She has even considered “quitting the pit” – Chinese slang for retiring a hobby.

“It is so difficult to buy them,” Stella says. “Our daily life is not easy already and why should we make things harder for ourselves?”