What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: Are Labubu Dolls Demonic?
This week, I’m covering my favorite type of fake news: the kind where people think a children’s toy is leading little ones straight into the clutches of Satan. This time, the focus is on Labubu dolls, the incredibly popular, rather ugly monster collectibles that have spread around the world like typhus in recent years.
Why do people call Labubu dolls evil?
TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram users are taking the demonic nature of Labubu dolls very seriously and are sounding the alarm. “You need to know what you’re inviting into your home,” TikToker The Spilled Tee says. “[Labubu dolls] could be a modern-day incarnation of a demonic god worshiped thousands of years ago, and this isn’t just speculation.”
However, the demon god who is said to have infected Labubus is no ordinary Beelzebub. It is Pazuzu , a deity worshipped in Mesopotamia in the first millennium BC – a real deep mark on demonology.
“Pazuzu is called the ‘Demon King of the Wind,’” explains Lindsay Ivan on TikTok. “The demons prey on the young,” she adds readily.
I can’t say for sure that the ancient Mesopotamian god doesn’t prey on innocent children through the mass production of plush and vinyl dolls, but the evidence is… lacking. The Labubu dolls are based on a character from a 2015 book series called Monsters by Kasing Lung, who says she was inspired by Northern European fairy tales rather than Babylonian wind gods. Additionally, the Labubu dolls don’t actually resemble the Pazuzu idols — the images in posts like these are AI-generated and not based on ancient artifacts. While it’s true that Pazuzu was worshiped and feared as the king of the wind demons, he wasn’t strictly an evil deity and didn’t prey on children; he protected them.
At first glance, the main connection between Labubu and Pazuzu is that their names sound similar, but as a renowned demonology researcher and 12th level necromancer, I discovered another shocking connection between Labubu and Pazuzu that even TikTok’s evil toy experts missed.
Who is Pazuzu?
Unlike Labubu, Pazuzu was a ferocious demon with a dog-like face, bulging eyes, a scaly body, and a penis shaped like a snake’s head. According to Nils P. Hesse’s book Evil vs. Evil: The Demon Pazuzu , Pazuzu figurines were extremely popular in ancient Mesopotamia, especially in homes where there were children. Archaeologists have unearthed many of these figurines, and holes drilled into some of them indicate that they were likely worn as amulets. The designs are uniform enough to suggest that they were mass-produced.
So, the mass-produced, collectible, slightly disturbing figurines that people with children kept in their homes: Pazuzu dolls were essentially the same as Labubu dolls .
The Subtle Morality of Mesopotamian Demons
Pazuzu figurines were probably more than just decoration; the demon had a purpose. In ancient Mesopotamia, Lamashtu was a real bad guy. How bad? Well, the lion-headed goddess survived by feeding on the blood of babies. Today, we would classify these unfortunate children as victims of “crib death” (SIDS), but the Babylonians blamed Lamashtu for it. Pazuzu was the lord of the destructive winds, so he wasn’t a good guy, but he wasn’t a child killer either. Pazuzu’s power over the winds meant he could carry Lamashtu back to the underworld from which she came, so Pazuzu figurines were likely intended to protect children in the home by scaring Lamashtu away.
Ancient people had a complex and nuanced relationship with demons, and there’s some ambiguity in their use of Pazuzu idols. The Babylonians were basically saying, “That dude blew my house down last year, so I don’t like him, but this ugly statue is keeping Lamashtu from drinking my baby’s blood, so we keep it on the mantelpiece, along with the snake-headed penis. Pazuzu may be an asshole, but he’s our asshole.”
What happened to Pazuzu anyway?
Time eventually catches up with everyone, even the gods. Pazuzu’s followers gradually forgot about the wind demon in favor of new, cooler deities like Jehovah, Jesus, Allah, and Brian Wilson. Baby-protecting idols, amulets, and other “zuzu” paraphernalia rotted in the attics of Mesopotamia, and Pazuzu slept dreamlessly like the forgotten gods for thousands of years.
But in the early 1970s, Pazuzu was resurrected. In William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist and its later film adaptation, Pazuzu possesses young Regan and makes her vomit pea soup on an annoying priest. Rather than controlling the wind or exorcising child killers, modern-day Pazuzu seeks to inflict human suffering and corrupt the young, but what a comeback. Pazuzu came back to life because he had what the gods wanted: worshipers. First 1970s moviegoers, now weirdos spreading dire warnings on TikTok and Instagram.
The more things change, the more they are, etc., etc.
In ancient Mesopotamia, the demons that killed babies and blew up grain silos weren’t just symbols. They were real, and they could hurt you if you crossed them. They weren’t to be trifled with or messed with. I can’t help but notice the similarities between these ancient pagans and the people on TikTok making Labubu/Pazuzu videos: both believe that an evil being named Pazuzu directly influences their lives, even if they don’t agree with his motives (while most TikTok users probably call themselves Christians, believing in a god like Pazuzu could technically make them pagans).
Despite the long-standing efforts of Judeo-Christian organizations to push the idea of one God (and their exclusive right to him), it seems impossible to wean people off the belief in little demons living in dolls. Folk religion just won’t die. I actually think that’s wonderful. A little scary and maybe weird, but wonderful.