‘KPop Demon Hunters’ HUNTR/X Dolls Look Off, Cost A Ton, Ship Late

KPop Demon Hunters Dolls

Mattel

While I know that Netflix has been rushing to get out KPop Demon Hunters merch after its unexpected tidal wave of success, “rush” is not often a thing that can happen in the retail industry, much of the time. The first KPop Demon Hunters Mattel dolls certainly prove that.

Pre-Orders for the KPop Demon Hunters Dolls will have you battling scalpers on Wednesday, November 12, at 12 PM ET, where you can buy three 3-packs at once. As in, nine dolls, if you’re so inclined to try to get into the resale market yourself. But if, as a normal consumer, you just want one trio, that will run you $150 for the set.

The other problem? The ship date. You are pre-ordering these dolls, not buying them. The images shown are not factory products, they are renders of what they will look like, and Mattel’s best estimate is that they will ship almost a year from now, in October 2026. So, just in time for next Christmas, and a year and a half after the original movie actually aired. The sequel is reportedly not getting here until 2029.

Past all of this, the doll design is just…not very good? Some fans may approve, but on closer inspection, a lot of these just look…off. I’d say that’s especially true of Zoey, who pretty much looks like an entirely different character. The others are better, but there’s just not something quite right about Rumi and Mira either. If you want to see this in action, you can check out the work of doll customizer Yohan, who has gone through all three of them with fixes:

The caveats here are that A) these are renders, not the final product, and things could still change or be adjusted before production and B) these are not hyper-accurate figurines, they are still dolls, and there is often some leeway there. For many fans of the movie, “good enough” is probably all that’s needed. But I mean, $150 and an entire year of waiting isn’t nothing.

Despite all of this, no matter the stock, they will sell out immediately, so prepare to get your heart broken. And like I said, there’s a good chance this is not just going to be other rabid fans you’re competing against, but scalpers and their bot armies, and expect to see these on sale on Ebay for 10x the price at some point.

There will be a rolling wave of all kinds of KPop Demon Hunters merch heading to shelves between deals with Mattel and Hasbro. As for the movie itself, as mentioned, the sequel is four years away, and we don’t know what else may show up in the interim, with nothing officially announced.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.