Why are we ADDICTIED TO SILLY CRAZES?

With grown women clamouring to get hold of the latest must-have accessory – Labubu dolls – we ask...

- POLLY JEAN HARRISON, JOHANNA BELL

We’ve probably all done it - followed a trend at some point in our lives, whether that be flares from the 70s, sporting a perm and blue mascara in the 80s, or buying anything Spice Girls-related in the 90s. But what happens when a trend becomes a full-blown craze? When something becomes so popular that everyone seems to have it, so, of course, you just have to have it too. Over the decades we've lived through Beanie Babies, Pokémon cards, troll dolls, the Rubik’s cube and Jellycat plushies to name just a few. More recently the Stanley cup was the must-have drinking bottle to be seen with, but now, a new craze has swept the nation. Enter the Labubu - a keyring, gremlin-like doll that, thanks to Copenhagen Fashion Week last summer, became the must-have accessory to pair with the designer Birkin handbag. So popular are they that even celebrities like Rihanna and Dua Lipa have been spotted with them, and Loose Women’s Olivia Attwood recently filmed herself excitedly unboxing a new one. Part of their allure is that they come individually wrapped in foil packages - ‘blind boxes’ - so you don’t know which design you’re getting until you open it. But what makes grown women turn into excitable children when it comes to crazes, and why do we get swept up in them? Woman investigates...

‘A deep-rooted need to belong’

Consultant counselling psychologist Dr Ritz Birah, founder of Reflect with