Our story began 17 years ago with a single line of code.
A young programmer, fresh out of Sichuan University’s computer science department, typed out the first lines of his career—and his only employer so far—at Alipay. But inside him lived something bigger. Not “changing the world” in some grand slogan, but leaving his own mark on it. That seed was called INOVATION—a deliberate misspelling that merged “innovation” with “mission.”
I. Code & Poetry
The clumsy romance of programmer poets
In the beginning, we really were just a bunch of programmers. No branding skills. No marketing know-how. We couldn’t even name our products without that raw, engineer-like directness. But we held onto a simple thought: What if we could bring the joy of games into real life? What if playful experiences could seep into every corner of daily living?
We wanted to create fun ways to live.
That was around 2015. The first thing we built had nothing to do with blind boxes. We made “Face to Face”—a place for friends to share beautiful memories. We built “Love Tree”—a virtual tree two people water together, growing it with companionship. We even tried our hand at the most engaging instant messengers of the day, hoping couples could chat and play their way through the day. We were programmers, but the code we wanted to write was the kind that brings people closer.
Then we discovered art toys. Like every young fan, we tore open Sonny Angels, collected every new Molly, fell for Pucky’s dreamy palettes, and loved Labubu and Marvel’s heroes. And we saw for the first time how BE@RBRICK collaborations turned toys into cultural icons. These works made us believe: a tiny blind box can hold imagination far bigger than its size.
Between social connection and art toys, we saw the same thing—connection. The bond between people. The heartbeat of that split-second when you tear open a box.
So we asked ourselves: What happens when a group of coders falls in love with art toys you hold in your hands?
II. The Coldest Winter
When the whole world ran out of money
- The capital winter froze the startup scene. Our social product was still being polished. Monetization was a distant dream. The stock market crash left investment firms struggling to survive—it wasn’t that we had no money; the whole world had no money.
Then the message came: “After discussion, we have decided not to proceed with this round of investment.”
The office fell so quiet you could hear the whir of keyboard fans.
It was during those days that one of our founders—a strong-willed woman—taped a piece of paper to the wall. On it were eight characters: “Stick to one path, step by step with a righteous heart.” Below them, a line that would later be etched into our DNA: “Stay optimistic. Even if you can’t sail with full wind, don’t let your youth be wasted. Be a poet of the business world.”
We gritted our teeth. We survived.
III. The First Ray of Light
Four years to the first million
From 2016 to 2019—four full years—we pivoted from social to art toys.
During that time, we watched art toys burst from a niche hobby into the mainstream. Molly went from a pouty little girl to a phenomenon with lines snaking through malls. Pucky defined “healing by opening the box” with her dreamlike worlds. Dimoo, that fantastical dream boy, became a hot commodity on the secondary market, with hidden figures multiplying in value dozens of times over. As players ourselves, we chased those series too—the ritual of opening a full set, the tension of tearing the bag, the moment of finding a hidden figure that made the whole office crowd around. We got it.
In 2019, our revenue crossed the first 1 million RMB. No champagne that day, but everyone staring at the backend numbers had red eyes.
That same year, we jumped into the online blind‑box market along with 580 other companies—fast trial and error, Tiaotiaogou, Hetao, Blind Box App. On August 10, 2019, the Blind Box App officially launched. That was the spark.
By the end of 2021, we hit our first “small goal”—100 million RMB.
IV. Artists Enter the Stage
A decade‑long leap from code to art toys
The day we broke 100 million, founder Wu Wendong sat at his desk for a long time, then opened a document and wrote: “We came from code. But from now on, we have to learn to listen to artists’ stories.”
That was when the artists began walking into a room once filled only with the sound of keyboards.
In 2022, DORA was born. She refuses to be defined—tough, cool, with a sharpness in her gaze that commands attention. The first DORA blind box series sold 500,000 units in four months, topped Tmall’s art toy bestseller list, and attracted over 3 million followers across the web.
In October that same year, Baby Zoraa arrived. A milk‑fierce little tiger tooth, a mischievous kid in kindergarten—you just want to reach out and hug her. Unlike DORA, Zoraa says: “This is who I am. Do you like me?” One declares war outward; the other embraces inward.
We pioneered the “big blind box” category, extending the unboxing ritual from your fingertips to your whole arm. Our IP selection process is practically the “most romantic algorithm” in existence: over 3,000 design drafts a year, filtered layer by layer, with less than 1% going into production. Because we know—every single art toy that reaches a user will become a companion for some part of someone’s life.
In May 2024, we brought 9 IPs to Chengdu IFS for the “TNT Special Ops” pop‑up—five days, over 10 million RMB in sales. In October that year, at the TNT SPACE carnival in the century‑old Tianhou Temple at Shanghai Suhe Creek MixC World, 14 new limited editions sold out the moment reservations opened.
In 2025, the brand landed in Bangkok, Thailand, with the “Born to Explore” pop‑up, and held artist signings in Singapore, where our IP RAYAN made its overseas debut as an independent theme.
V. Polishing Every Ray of Light
What doesn’t kill you
The times that looked smoothest to outsiders were often our hardest.
Servers crashed. Late‑night full‑team post‑mortems, the clatter of keyboards and whiteboard architecture diagrams stretching until 4 AM. Problems of every kind kept popping up; the founder’s phone never stopped ringing. For someone不善言辞 from a tech background, that communication pressure was harder than writing ten thousand lines of code. But every time he hung up, he said the same thing: “Making the product better is the best answer to everything.”
At three in the morning on the packing line, programmers put down their keyboards, rolled up their sleeves, and moved boxes, packed orders, slapped on shipping labels. Those scenes never appeared on any milestone poster, but they really happened. Every light that stayed on late into the night remembers.
Along this road, we’ve seen so many great peers running on their own tracks—some perfecting color aesthetics, some setting textbook examples of category breakout, some using distribution power to bring art toys farther. We respect everyone who has added a brick to this industry, because we believe the art toy track is wide enough for many good stories.
The Nietzsche line has always stayed with us: “What does not kill me, makes me stronger.”
VI. An Unfinished Poem
The next line is waiting for you to write it
In 2023, TNT SPACE sold over 10 million blind boxes and exceeded 500 million RMB in annual revenue. In July 2024 alone, monthly GMV crossed 100 million RMB. As of 2025, total online exposure is over 1 billion, with 500,000 private‑domain followers and more than 4 million highly engaged paying members. Projected net profit for 2025 is between 150 and 200 million RMB.
But numbers are not the heart of our story.
We are a company that walked out of those eight characters: “Stick to one path, step by step with a righteous heart.” We started as just a bunch of coders. We built social products, instant messengers, a love tree. We didn’t understand business or packaging. But we understood the simplest thing of all: doing what you love to perfection is the best expression you can offer the world.
From social to art toys, from Face to Face to DORA and Zoraa, from connecting human emotions to collecting the little lights of life in blind boxes—this path took ten years. And every step counted.
This is a poem ten years in the making. Started by programmers, colored by artists, given soul by users.
What you’ve just read is only a comma. The real next line is waiting for you.
TNT SPACE’s story is our story. And now, it’s your story too.
