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On 17 February China will celebrate the start of the year of the horse, the zodiac sign symbolising high energy and hard work. But the runaway success of a defective stuffed toy suggests that many Chinese are not feeling the vibe.
A red horse toy produced by Happy Sister in the city of Yiwu in the west of China was meant to wear a broad grin, but a factory error meant it hit the shops sporting a despairing grimace. Because the smile was placed upside down, the horse’s nostrils could be interpreted as tears.
Despite the manufacturing error, the toy has become an unexpected success with shoppers after going viral on Chinese social media and capturing a zeitgeist of corporate fatigue and worker burnout.
It also taps into a broader trend for so-called “ugly-cute” toys, popularised in recent years by characters such as Pop Mart’s toothy monster Labubu.
“People joked that the crying horse is how you look at work, while the smiling one is how you look after work,” Zhang Huoqing, owner of Happy Sister, told Reuters.
By mid-January she said she was receiving daily orders of more than 15,000 units, prompting the factory to open up 10 additional production lines.
Many Chinese white-collar workers have endured the notorious 996 system, which requires employees to work 9am to 9pm, six days a week. The practice is exalted by tech entrepreneurs including Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, but has been increasingly criticised since 2021 when an employee of a e-commerce company died suddenly after finishing a late-night shift. The 966 practice was outlawed that year, but long overtime hours are still common.
“This little horse looks so sad and pitiful, just like the way I feel at work,” wrote an online buyer of the toy, by the name of Tuan Tuan Mami, according to SCMP.
“Consumer products and internet memes can act as outlets for discussing work pressure, especially on platforms like Xiaohongshu, where consumer culture and emotional expression are tightly intertwined,” Jacob Cooke, the CEO of WPIC Marketing + Technologies, an e-commerce consulting firm, told Business Insider.
Meanwhile, wholesale orders for the “crying horse” have been placed from South Africa, east Asia and the Middle East. Its image is expected to appear on a new range of merchandise in the coming year.
Zhang never discovered who sewed the horse’s snout on upside down. “Since we can’t figure out exactly whose mistake it was, we’ll just give everyone a bonus,” she said.
