RMS Mystery Dumplings: The $5 Blind Box Behind the Viral Craze

What is an RMS Mystery Dumpling? It is a blind box squishy sold at Five Below in the United States for $5, and it has become one of the most talked-about squishy toys of the year. Each box contains a small dumpling-shaped squishy, but you do not know which one is inside until you open it. Most boxes hold a common design. A small number hold a rare glitter version, and an even smaller number hold a chase design that collectors will pay a large amount for. That combination — a low retail price, a cute food shape, and the chance of pulling something rare — turned a $5 toy into a collecting craze, with some designs changing hands for many times their store price. This guide explains what the RMS Mystery Dumpling is, how the blind box works, what the rare versions are worth, and why the excitement is now cooling down.

What Is the RMS Mystery Dumpling?

The RMS Mystery Dumpling is a blind box squishy in the shape of a small steamed bun. It is sold at Five Below, an American discount chain, for $5 a box. The concept is simple: you pay $5, you take a sealed box, and you open it to find out which dumpling design you have. The designs are small, soft, slow-rising squishies with different colours, faces, and finishes. Most of them are common designs that appear in many boxes. A few are rare, and those are the ones collectors chase.

The appeal is easy to understand. A dumpling is a cute, friendly shape, and a blind box adds the excitement of a surprise. Children enjoy opening a box to see what they got, and they enjoy trading duplicates with friends. Adults who collect squishies enjoy the hunt for the rare designs. At $5, the price is low enough that buying several boxes feels reasonable, and that is exactly what many collectors did: they bought box after box in the hope of finding a rare one. Five Below’s low price also made the toy accessible to a wide audience, including children spending pocket money and parents looking for an affordable gift.

How the Blind Box Works

A blind box works on a simple idea: you pay before you know what is inside. The manufacturer produces a series of designs, prints them on a checklist, and packs them into identical sealed boxes. Common designs are packed in large numbers, so most buyers will pull one of those. Rare designs are packed in much smaller numbers, so only a small share of buyers will find one. The rarest designs, known as chase designs, are packed in very small numbers indeed, and finding one is a matter of luck.

This is the same model used by many collectible toys, from figurines to trading cards, and it is deliberately designed to encourage repeat buying. If you pull a common design, you might buy another box to try again. If you pull a duplicate, you might trade it with a friend or buy another box. For collectors, the fun is partly in the opening and partly in completing the set. For the retailer, the model works because a $5 box that might contain something rare is an easy purchase to justify, and a customer who buys one box often comes back for another.

The model also creates a second-hand market. When a collector pulls a rare design they do not want, or pulls a duplicate of a rare design, they can sell it online. When a collector is missing one design to complete a set, they can buy it from someone else rather than opening more boxes. That is where the high resale prices come from: the rare designs are worth more than $5 because they are hard to find, and the chase designs are worth far more because they are very hard to find.

Rare, Glitter, and Chase Designs

The designs that drive the RMS Mystery Dumpling market are the rare glitter versions and the chase versions. The rare glitter dumplings, which have a sparkly finish that sets them apart from the common designs, have sold on the second-hand market for $40 to $50 — eight to ten times their $5 retail price. The chase designs, which are the rarest in the series, have sold for $100 to $200, which is twenty to forty times the price of a single box. Those are striking numbers for a toy that costs $5 in a store, and they explain why the blind box attracted so much attention.

Is the Collecting Craze Cooling Down?

The evidence suggests that the collecting side of the RMS Mystery Dumpling is cooling down. Collectors who have completed their sets are now clearing out their duplicates, and listings for ordinary designs are appearing at prices close to the $5 retail price rather than above it. That is a normal pattern for a collectible toy: early excitement pushes prices up, then supply catches up, most collectors finish their sets, and the price of common designs falls back to roughly what they cost in the store. The rare glitter and chase designs still hold value, because they are genuinely scarce, but the ordinary dumplings no longer carry a premium.

If you are thinking of buying RMS Mystery Dumplings as an investment, the cooling market is a warning. Collectible toys are unpredictable, and a design that is worth $50 today may be worth $5 in a few months if more of them appear or if interest moves on to the next craze. Buying a toy because you like it is always a safer choice than buying it because you hope it will go up in value.

Where to Find Dumpling Squishies in Canada

Five Below is an American chain, so the RMS Mystery Dumpling is not sold in Canadian stores in the same way. Canadian shoppers who want a dumpling squishy have to look elsewhere, and that usually means an online order, a reseller, or a Canadian shop that sells similar food-shaped squishies. Squishopia is a Canadian shop that sells unbranded white-label dumpling squishies with solid fillings — no water beads, and no brand-name copies. You can browse our dumpling squishy collection for bun-shaped slow-rising squishies (toys, not edible), or look through our blind box squishies if you enjoy the surprise of opening a mystery box. Our squishies are sold plainly as what they are: soft, cute toys made for squeezing and collecting, not as investments and not as copies of any brand’s designs.

Shop Squishies at Squishopia

If you like the idea of a dumpling squishy but cannot find the RMS version in Canada, visit Squishopia to browse the shop. Single squishies are $6 and three-packs are $15, with local pickup available in Windsor, Ontario, and shipping across Canada for $8.99, free on orders over $49. Every toy we sell is an unbranded white-label squishy with a solid filling — a simple, affordable way to enjoy the same cute, squeezable fun without chasing a blind box or paying a reseller’s price.