Winter Olympics: eager fans of panda mascot Bing Dwen Dwen make their own souvenirs after stocks sell out
- Some stores have been forced to limit customers to just one panda souvenir each due to the overwhelming demand
- People have had to queue for hours at stores in order to purchase mascot merchandise
Bing Dwen Dwen, the name for a panda cub mascot dressed in a suit of ice, has been the most searched item on the internet in China for the past week.
The flagship store for Olympic products at e-commerce website Tmall.com said the small statuette for Bing Dwen Dwen was temporarily unavailable after more than 70,000 were sold since January.
In front of physical stores across the mainland, people have to queue for hours to buy one of the plastic figurines. Some shops have set a limit of one mascot souvenir for each customer.
At a store in Beijing’s Wangfujing commercial area, about 300 people had already queued outside by 6am on Sunday, three hours before the store’s opening time, The Beijing News reported.
![Residents were queuing up to buy a Bing Dwen Dwen at a shop in Beijing.
[FEATURES] Photo / Baidu](https://img.i-scmp.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=contain,width=1024,format=auto/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2022/02/07/e57de2de-c483-4688-b5c4-09eff8b3e8c4_1b8eeb94.jpg "Residents were queuing up to buy a Bing Dwen Dwen at a shop in Beijing.
[FEATURES] Photo / Baidu")
One man surnamed Chen said he spent the whole night waiting to buy a stuffed toy of Bing Dwen Dwen for his girlfriend who loved the mascot’s cartoon image after seeing a Japanese TV reporter wearing six badges of the mascot when reporting on camera at the event.