What is a Sonny Angel?

Originating in Japan, Sonny Angels have taken over the world of trinkets, collectors, and social media. You can find them in most malls, Japanese shops, and even the back of phone cases. They are miniature baby looking figures with a fruit, animal or cute object on the top of their head. They are either a standing figure, or a "hipper" that you can stick on the back of any flat surface, like a desk, laptop, or phone case. You can buy them in bulk, or a single box. They come in blind boxes and have captured the hearts of every trinket loving collector. The excitement of them being in a blind box added to their popularity because people would collect so many boxes until they opened the specific figure they wanted. The Sonny Angel brand has a tremendous following globally that appeal to all ages and they use social media and collaborations with other brands to expand on the interest of new lines and new figurines being released. 

Social Media Presence

The Rise to Popularity

Like it was mentioned before, Sonny Angels are new to social media. They have been an established company since 2004, with their first release and did not gain popularity until 2022 when they joined social media. Then they immediately went viral, following releases of cute figurines everyone wanted to collect. It was exciting for people not to know what kind of figure they were going to get, which kept them buying more. Because they started rising on social media, where most gen z  users were, gen z'ers were their main target focus and where most of their buyers came from. On TikTok, the hashtag #SonnyAngel gained over 95 million views

Blind Box Culture

Following more releases. and their updates to their social media, I believe that Sonny Angels created the current blind box culture that everyone loves. Blind boxes are now sold almost everywhere. Blind boxes have always been around, but since the rise in popularity of Sonny Angel Blind Boxes, all blind boxes in general have gained popularity with it. 

Blind Box Culture & Sonny Angel Popularity Timeline:

Social media caused sonny angels to start gaining popularity in 2022, which has an effect on the popularity of blind boxes in general, with both of them increasing in searches and popularity since 2022. Since then blind boxes became a viral trend, and the Sonny Angel brand led it.

Trends & Community

YouTube: Sonny Angel blind box hauls are a trend on YouTube that capture a lot of attention. The YouTube videos veature creators spending large amounts of money on these blind boxes and gives a sense of surprise to both the creator and the viewer of the video. This shared excitement creaes a sense of community through Sonny Angels. 

X (Twitter): The community of Sonny Angels is a very popular, but niche community. If you ask a 34 year old blue collar worker what a Sonny Angel is, they would probably give you a confused look. If you ask a 21 year old college student, they would know in a second. So there are some memes and inside jokes that only people with Sonny Angels would understand. If you own Sonny Angels or know and have an interest in them, they would know the inside jokes and the community around them. This collection of tweets shows examples of the "members" of the Sonny Angel community. 

Brand Collaboration

Their first brand collaboration was in August of 2024 with Casetify, a popular phone case brand.  It included a line with a case and a sonny angel connected to it. The collection emphasized a fun collectible with a fucntional accessory. They collaborated by sending famous beauty influencer a box of blind boxes from the Casetify collaboration where he blew them up from his videos. This was Sonny Angels first brand collaboration to date, that was promoted on social media. 

It's a Brand, an Aesthetic, a Lifestyle

Sonny Angel's are so popular, they have created a brand and an aesthetic, their Instagram showcases an attractive theme from their collections showing all their new figures that make people want to search for them in stores immediately. Some people dedicate their accounts to just collecting Sonny Angels, some people collect them and then resell them, and some people collect them to just share photos of their aesthetic. Sonny Angels share different purposes on each different social media. As I mentioned before, Instagram is used for updating new releases of collections, and YouTube and TikTok are used for sharing hauls of the blind boxes. Pinterest shows aesthetic images of Sonny Angels to just show their personality while Facebook is mainly used for buying and selling pages of Sonny Angels. 

The Sonny Angel Charm

Sonny Angels has created a unique niche in the world of collecting, in markets & shops, and Social Media. They have a way of capturing an artist with their small aesthetic and exciting surprise of blind box openings, that when you see one being sold, you can't help but imagine with figure of the collection lying under the plastic wrapping hidden, waiting to be opened. Sonny Angels fosters a community on social media and would not be popular without the community that was created through social media. The phenomenon of Sonny Angels shows how the simple habit of collecting, can turn into a culture and bring high community engagement.