Pop Mart Display Case for the Skyward Series: $56.50 to $113.00, and Why the 25x25x20cm Low-Box Format Is the One an 8-Year-Old's Nightstand Actually Wants
Last Saturday evening, around 8:40pm, the email arrived. Sender name: Sonia — north Toronto, two kids, works at the children's section of a public library. Sophia is her eight-year, the one who, for the last month, has been reading a paperback of Laputa: Castle in the Sky every night before bed and pointing at the page where Pazu rides the kite-bird across the cloud line. "I'm not trying to dress this up," Sonia wrote. "She wants a flying figure, and she wants it to live out where she can see it, not buried in a drawer. So do I order the figure and the case in the same week, or do them one after the other and have her wait for one while the other is in the mail?"
I told her: same week, but skip the tall cases. The kid's nightstand is the variable. A standard kid's nightstand gives you 18cm of useful vertical clearance below the bottom of the next shelf up — sometimes 22cm if you've got the tall ladder-style one — and a 25×25×35 default Pop Mart cube won't fit without clearing the lamp. Skyward is 25×25×20cm. That's a 5cm shorter low-box format, and at that height the case slips under a normal kid-shelf lamp shade and parks flush against the wall. There's no lid; it's an open cube with a slide-open door on the right. The top edge sits at chest height for an eight-year standing next to the bed. Sophia can open it without standing on tiptoe. The reason we built this size in the first place: most Pop Mart cases on the market run 25cm deep, 25cm wide, 35cm tall or taller, because the figures have hats and props that eat vertical space. The Skyward figure is a kid sitting on a flying bird — the longest dimension is horizontal, not vertical. The box had to match the bird, not the kid.
The UV backdrop on the Skyward case is a sky. Not "blue with white shapes" — a real sky, with a cloud line that breaks the back panel roughly in half, and the word SKYWARD printed in caps across the upper third. The lettering is part of the scene, not a watermark; the figure is a kid on a bird, the bird is the lowest element, the clouds are middle, the lettering is upper. When you look at the case straight on, the eye reads top-down: SKYWARD, then clouds, then bird, then kid. From the side, the lettering foreshortens into the cloud line and reads as a horizon banner. The UV press runs the SKYWARD word and the cloud layer as a single print run, not two. The letter and the cloud are designed to sit on different vertical zones of the back panel, so the white outline of the letter never overlaps the white of the cloud. We had this version of the layout for about six months now. Before that, the word sat lower on the panel and the bird's wing would clip through it; we moved the word up about 4cm so the bird can sit clean.
The slide-open door is on the right side. The pull-tab is a slim recessed channel on the left edge of the door panel, about 1cm deep, polished smooth so a kid's fingernail doesn't catch on the inside corner. Sonia reported back on Thursday: Sophia opens the case about five to seven times a day — morning, after-school, before-dinner, after-bath, before-bed, and once or twice extra when she's showing a friend. That's a lot of finger traffic. The 3mm acrylic door panel is rated for tens of thousands of cycles on the slide rail. We run the same rail mould we use on the heavier Pop Mart cases — no thinner, no shorter. What wears first isn't the rail. It's the print on the UV back panel. After about six months of finger touch, the lower-right corner of the UV (right where the door parks) starts to look slightly smudged, because little fingers rest there when she slides the door back. We tell every parent who orders the case: if your kid is going to touch the UV directly (and they will), order the No Background version. The black brushed base hides fingerprint smudges, and the figure is the point — the UV is a bonus. If you want the UV, get the Solid Wood Ring Light version. The wood top is a closed panel, and the door opens horizontally — fingers don't land on the back.
The 3mm sheet on the Skyward case is the same 3mm we run on every Pop Mart case in the shop. We don't run a thinner sheet for the small box. Why: the thin sheet flexes when you slide the door. On a 25×25×35 default Pop Mart cube, the door weight is distributed across the longer rail. On a 25×25×20cm low-box, the door is shorter, the lever arm is shorter, but the rail travel is the same — same 3mm, same rail mould. We tested a 2mm sheet early on; the door wobbled on the rail after about 200 cycles. 3mm is the floor. The 98% transparency is the part you notice at night when the ring light is on. With the ring light on (the $90.40 tier), the LED strip runs across the top edge of the case, hidden behind the 10mm PVC foam board. The light pours down through the front panel and hits the UV backdrop. The SKYWARD lettering, which is white ink on a blue field, glows. The clouds, which are a light grey-blue ink, also glow. The bird, which is printed in the original acrylic's natural transparency, doesn't glow — it reads as a silhouette. From Sophia's pillow, that's what the case looks like at night: a glowing sky with a dark bird carrying a dark child across it. She calls the case "the night sky."
A few notes on customisation, because Sonia asked about all of these. Size: the Skyward box is 25×25×20cm by default, but the mould runs in 5cm steps from 15 to 35cm on width, depth, and height. We don't charge a setup fee for size adjustments. Want a wider box for a tall figure? We can go to 35cm wide and 35cm deep. Want a thinner shelf-mount? 15×15×20cm works for most small pop figures. The only height we don't run below 20cm is the ring-light tier, because the LED strip needs about 8cm of vertical room inside the top to spread evenly. Below that, the LED hotspot is visible at the top of the UV. UV: we run themed backgrounds for the named Pop Mart series (Skyward, Dimoo, Labubu, and so on). For a custom figure, send us a high-resolution reference photo and we mock up a layout on your figure's silhouette. The mock-up is a free revision; we run a small test strip on a sample piece of acrylic before we run the full back panel, so you see the printed result on the actual material, not on a screen. We run the test strip on a leftover piece from the same batch, so the printed colour holds up to the final sheet. Custom logo or name: want "Sophia's Skyward" printed on the UV? We can run that as a single overlay on top of the existing cloud background, in white or gold ink. No additional setup fee.
Sophia got the case on Sunday morning. Sonia sent a photo at 9:14am — the box on the nightstand, the door slid open, the kid-figure on the bird lifted out and held up to the camera. The email had one line: "She opened it four times before breakfast." The four-tier breakdown for the Skyward series sits at $56.50 (No Background), $67.80 (With Background), $90.40 (Ring Light + With Background), and $113.00 (Solid Wood Ring Light + With Background). The kid got the PVC ring-light tier. The dad, Sonia wrote, is now eyeing the solid wood version for his office. Click through to see the case live in the shop, or jump straight to the collections page to compare against the other Pop Mart sizes.