Every photograph is a frozen moment. And Hirono — Pop Mart's most quietly emotional character — has always been about the feelings we can't quite put into words but desperately want to preserve. The Hirono × Kodak collaboration figure, released April 24, 2026, brings those two ideas together in a piece that feels less like a product and more like a memory.
Who Is Hirono?
Hirono is a character created by Chinese artist and Pop Mart co-founder Lang, first released in 2021. He is not a hero, not a villain — just a quiet boy with an enormous inner world. Lang designed Hirono as an expression of his own personal emotions, drawn from literature, film, music, childhood memory, and the experience of raising his son. The character represents the full spectrum of what it feels like to be human: love, sadness, fear, joy, cowardice, and tenderness, all held inside someone who says very little.
Hirono is recognizable immediately — oversized vacant eyes, disheveled hair, oversized clothing, and an expression that sits precisely between melancholy and wonder. He appears surrounded by surreal props: flowers, masks, dripping paint, bandaged bears. His stories are told through costume and environment rather than words. Fans are invited to project their own emotional experience onto him, which is why collections tend to feel deeply personal to the people who own them.
In his first release year alone, Hirono generated over 52 million yuan in revenue. He has since collaborated with Vans, CLOT, Keith Haring, and now — most unexpectedly, most perfectly — Kodak.
Why Kodak Makes Perfect Sense
On paper, a designer toy brand and a film photography company don't seem like natural partners. But the logic becomes obvious almost immediately. Kodak's entire legacy is about preserving feeling — the warmth of analog photography, the specific quality of light in a Kodak print, the idea that some moments deserve to be captured and held onto. That is exactly what Hirono represents.
The figure dresses Hirono in a yellow raincoat with bear ears — one of the most beloved design signatures in the Hirono universe — and places him standing on a stack of Kodak-branded boxes. The warm yellows and vintage tones of Kodak's classic color palette map beautifully onto Hirono's world of muted nostalgia. Camera-inspired accessories complete the tableau. The result is a piece that feels like a photograph you didn't know you'd taken: a memory that arrives slightly warm, slightly faded at the edges, completely yours.
What Makes It Special
The Yellow Raincoat
Hirono's bear-eared yellow raincoat is one of the character's signature looks — and in Kodak yellow, it becomes something more. The color connection between Hirono's warmth and Kodak's iconic branding is not accidental. It is the whole collaboration in one garment.
The Kodak Boxes
Hirono stands on a stack of Kodak-branded film boxes — a miniature archive of moments. It's a quiet visual metaphor: this is what Hirono does, what Kodak does, what collecting itself does. Things get stacked. Preserved. Kept.
Vintage Color Palette
The warm yellows and slightly aged tones pull directly from Kodak's analog aesthetic. The figure looks like it was pulled from a photograph taken in the 1980s — which is exactly where the emotional resonance lives.
Camera Accessories
Camera-inspired details throughout give the figure a narrative specificity that goes beyond a simple branding exercise. This is Hirono the photographer — a new context for a character who has always been about the act of looking inward.
The "You Are Invited" Series
The collaboration is part of the "Hirono Moment — You Are Invited" series, which frames the entire collection around the idea of being welcomed into a private world. A Kodak invitation to a Hirono moment. In designer toy terms, that is an unusually graceful concept for a brand crossover — and it shows in how the figure feels when you hold it.
The Collector Perspective
Hirono collaborations have a consistent track record of appreciating in the secondary market precisely because they are emotionally coherent rather than purely commercial. The Vans collab, the Keith Haring collab — each brought something genuine to the character. The Kodak collaboration belongs in that same tier. It is not a logo slapped onto a figure. It is a genuine intersection of two brands that share the same core obsession: the preservation of feeling.
For Hirono collectors, this is an essential piece. For photography enthusiasts who have never bought a designer toy, this might be the first one that makes sense to own. For anyone who grew up with disposable cameras and still has a shoebox of developed prints somewhere — this figure will feel like it was made for you specifically.
The figure is limited edition. Unlike the AP × Swatch Royal Pop, which Swatch explicitly confirmed is not a limited run, this is a genuine finite production. Once it's gone, the secondary market is the only path. Pre-orders were already active at the time of the April 24 release date.
Shop Hirono × Kodak
Limited edition — available while stock lasts
