I Spent 2025 Queueing For Stuff - Here's What I Snagged
Amidst my typical New Year's Resolutions like eating more healthily and sleeping earlier (yeah right), I decided in January of this year that 2025 would be the year I'd take up a new hobby.
Rather predictably, most of my resolutions barely lasted a month, if at that. But looking back on the year I've had, I realised I actually did embrace a new hobby of sorts this year, though not in the way I'd been imagining.
That hobby?
Queueing.
Yes, you read that right.
Some of the queues I faced this year in search of limited-edition loot. | IMAGES: JANELLE YONG
Over the past year, Singapore has seen a number of limited-edition merchandise promotions, from fast food collabs to military-themed blind box plushies. Just seeing the magic words "limited stock" was enough to trigger my FOMO (the cute designs certainly didn't hurt either).
And so, I set forth to queue for loot, armed with the kiasu spirit that every Singaporean knows all too well. How did I fare? Well...
Difficulty level: Easy to Average
If you've ever hunted for limited-edition merch before, you know the drill: You (generally) need to buy a promo item first to get access to the merch, with purchase limits per person and stock amounts that vary wildly per outlet.
Some of my queueing expeditions proved to be surprisingly chill. Either there were almost no queues for some reason, or you could show up half an hour after opening and still be guaranteed to get one.
Beary cute. | IMAGES: JANELLE YONG
KFC x Butterbear collab (October)
This was KFC's second merch collab for the year, following the insanely popular KFC x Mofusand collab back in January and February (see the next section for details). Surprisingly, there was far less of a crowd queueing for the blind box keychains: 10 to 15 people at most, as opposed to the 100+ people swarming the place during the Mofusand collab.
Even the slightly more exclusive Butterbear plush crossbody bag only saw around the same volume of people. Sorry Butterbear, I guess you can't compare to Mofusand's popularity.
How can you not love that adorable face? | IMAGE: JANELLE YONG
Mr Coconut x Nestle plushies (August to September)
I'm still a bit surprised by this one. Everyone loves Milo, and Mr Coconut is decently popular too, so you'd expect at least some people to queue for these, right? To my surprise, when I went to snag the Week 1 plushie design (Cocorista Loves Milo), there still wasn't anyone else besides me when the shop opened. Still, I certainly won't complain about not having other merch hunters to compete with.
Difficulty level: Advanced
Of course, there were merch drops that required a lot more planning and effort. Unless you show up 5 hours in advance to secure your spot in line, you'd better be ready to go home empty-handed.
The coveted queue tickets, allowing purchase of the KFC Mofusand plushies. | IMAGE: JANELLE YONG
KFC x Mofusand plushies (January to February)
The KFC Mofusand collab was the first promotion I queued for this year. I ended up enjoying the challenge of queueing for stuff so much that I started keeping an eye out for other merch collabs, and the rest is history. So, thanks for the new hobby, KFC!
A full set of Week 1 to 3 KFC Mofusand plushies. From left to right: KFC Bucket Hat, Egg Tart Hat, and Chicken Drumstick Hat. | IMAGE: JANELLE YONG
After the first week, it was clear to me that arriving any later than 7 am would be a serious gamble on my part — a lesson I took seriously for the rest of the collab.
The ultra-rare 8-inch KFC Bucket Hat Mofusand plushie. | IMAGE: JANELLE YONG
Week 4 was where things got even more interesting. The 8-inch tall KFC Bucket Hat Mofusand was only available at selected outlets, with a mere 50 pieces up for grabs at each eligible outlet. By 7 am, the staff came outside to put up the "End of Queue" sign. With a lot of grumbling and complaints, the people beyond the cut-off point dispersed and left.
Fun fact: At 10.55 am, with 5 minutes to go before we were allowed to enter and purchase our loot, a passerby came strolling up to the people in the queue, hoping to buy a queue ticket off one of us for $50, to no avail.
For anyone else thinking of trying something like this in the future, I'd advise you to save your breath. After 6 hours of queueing, nobody's going to take you up on that offer. Besides, you wouldn't even be able to buy one of these off a scalper or reseller on Carousell for $50. Try $200, and you'll have better luck.
Meow I take your order? | IMAGES: JANELLE YONG
Starbucks x Mofusand (August)
2025 might as well have been called the Year of Mofusand. Aside from the aforementioned KFC collab, Starbucks had not one but TWO Mofusand merch launches, two weeks in a row.
The first launch wasn't too difficult, at least for me. Although I wasn't able to head down as early as I'd have liked, I was still able to get the pieces I wanted (2 cup clip blind boxes, the grey Mofusand barista plush keychain, and the orange Starbucks Mofusand plushie) by checking a few nearby Starbucks outlets.
And then, Starbucks made a surprise announcement mere days after the initial launch, revealing that a second line-up of Mofusand merch was on its way. This time, it was an adorably pink range of strawberry-themed Mofusand goodies. Sales would begin upon store opening, or at 7 am at 24-hour stores.
An organised way of tracking how many pieces of merch each customer is buying. | IMAGE: JANELLE YONG
15 minutes before sales began, a staff member came over with an inventory sheet and a stack of order sheets for each person to select what they wanted to purchase, and how many they intended to buy. Once a person filled in their order sheet, the staff member would update the inventory sheet he was carrying, allowing him to keep track of the outlet's stock levels more easily.
Incidentally, this queueing session was my first encounter with a scalper in the wild. An older lady standing behind me saw that I was only getting one each of the Strawberry Barista Plushie and Strawberry Barista Plush Keychain (Limit 2 pieces each per customer), and promptly tapped me on the shoulder. When I turned around, she asked me to get my limit of both items so she could get extras, and said she would pay me for it afterwards.
I was perhaps a bit less diplomatic than I should have been when I told her off for trying to bypass her purchase limit at the expense of everyone in line behind her. Fortunately, she said nothing in response, so I narrowly avoided becoming one of those people who gets into fights while queueing.
Some of these characters are so old that I don't even recognise them. | IMAGE: JANELLE YONG
McDonald's Vintage Lunchbox (November)
You might have seen this on McDonald's social media at various points throughout the year. Whenever a new outlet opens, McDonald's has an opening promotion where the first 1,000 customers at the outlet on opening day get a free McDonald's vintage metal lunchbox with their meal.
My hard-earned loot. | IMAGE: JANELLE YONG
It was surprisingly crowded when I went down, even for a MacDonald's. There were fairly lengthy queues at the ordering kiosks, and then again at the counter to collect our food. All the while, the actual queue to redeem the lunch boxes had started way before the redemption time of 2 pm, and was growing steadily. I ended up temporarily abandoning my order and joining the lunchbox queue first, before collecting my actual food nearly half an hour later.
After all the effort I went through to get myself a lunchbox, I realised there's just one problem with it: I find it too precious to actually use for food! Oh well.
Difficulty level: Some activity required
Unlike F&B collabs, museums make you earn your merch through more than just queuing - snagging items requires quizzes, physical challenges, or literal sprinting.
Plushie blind boxes from the Singapore Navy Museum, Air Force Museum, and Singapore Discovery Centre. | IMAGE: JANELLE YONG
Defence Collective Festival (November)
When I first learned about this year's Defence Collective Festival through my social media feed, I wasn't too interested. That is, until I learned that about the plushie blind boxes unique to each museum that were up for grabs.
In the interest of collecting the "full" set (random designs notwithstanding), I decided to purchase the festival's All-Access Pass, which would allow me to take part in the passport activities at all 3 museums.
Each museum's activity passport had two possible activities to complete, of which you only needed to do one to redeem the plushie blind box. In the interest of saving time, I chose to complete each museum's quiz trail for my prizes.
Thankfully a lot quieter than a real koel. | IMAGE: JANELLE YONG
National Museum of Singapore 138th Anniversary Stamp Rally (October)
As part of National Museum of Singapore's (NMS) 138th anniversary festivities, the museum collaborated with local artist Ven (@vensroom) to reimagine four creatures from the William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings – the koel, moonrat, mangrove snake, and grey-cheeked flying squirrel – as adorable illustrations.
The stamps are almost as cute as the koel plush. | IMAGES: JANELLE YONG
Said illustrations were part of a stamp rally taking place across two weeks, where you visited four locations within the museum and filled out the gorgeous stamp rally postcard. Your reward for doing so (aside from the postcard itself)? If it was the weekend, the first 350 participants to complete the stamp rally could redeem an adorable koel plush bag charm.
Naturally, I couldn't resist the challenge.
Despite the weekend crowd, I was able to channel my inner Shanti Pereira, completing my stamp card in record time to get my hands on the cutest koel I'd ever seen.
Difficulty level: Fastest fingers
Not all queueing is done with your legs. Sometimes, it comes down to how quickly you can type, tap and swipe on your phone or computer.
Chagee's Hello Kitty collab merch, consisting of a sling bag, a hairclip, a plushie charm, and a mini charm. | IMAGE: JANELLE YONG
Chagee x Hello Kitty (December)
I'll be candid: While Chagee made a valiant effort to jump on the collab merch bandwagon, they could seriously use some lessons in how to run such promotions.
Don't get me wrong: The tanned Hello Kitty merch line-up is absolutely gorgeous. Even the promotional drink came in a limited-edition Hello Kitty cup, with a matching reusable drink bag available if you were buying multiple drinks.
But the way the collab was handled? Oof. It was quite clear that Chagee had severely underestimated how much demand there would be for said merch, and was ill-prepared to handle it.
Even the cup and reusable bag from this collab are cute enough to keep and collect. | IMAGES: JANELLE YONG
Week 1 of the collab launch quickly descended into chaos. Despite visible stock sitting behind the counter, orders flooded in faster than the system could track, wait times stopped updating, and finished drinks piled up across the counter.
An hour passed. Then two. By the time "Fully redeemed" stickers went up on the posters, I was genuinely unsure whether the merch would still exist by the time my number was called.
I wonder if I have enough space to hang both of these on my backpack at the same time? | IMAGE: JANELLE YONG
Week 2 wasn't much better. The voucher bundle with the mini charm was given a surprise midnight release, leading to massive disappointment for anyone who'd assumed it would be sold in the morning when stores opened.
As for the plushie charm? Oh boy.
Upon attempting to purchase the bundle at 10 am when orders began, I was met with a flood of error messages, ending with one informing me that the product I was trying to buy was now sold out.
I resorted to going down the list of stores in increasing order of distance, hoping that I'd succeed before all of them sold out, and ended up finally making my purchase from an outlet on the other end of Singapore.
Looking back, while I'm glad I managed to collect the entire set, the lack of communication from Chagee and the ill-thought out handling of the promotion meant that this was easily my worst queueing experience this year.
Starbucks Bearista Cup (December)
You may have heard about the absolutely disastrous release of these Bearista Glass Cold Cups in the US. Thankfully, Starbucks Singapore had the good sense to handle the Singapore release of these cups in a less chaotic manner. Namely, via online pre-order (to be shipped in February 2026).
At 10 am on 21 December, both the Starbucks app and the Starbucks website were updated into a "holding area" in preparation for the pre-order's launch the next day. To maximise my chances, I decided to camp in the "holding area" overnight on both my phone and my laptop.
Sure enough, once the virtual queue started the next morning, I found myself with a queue number of approximately 4,500 on my phone, and even further back on my laptop. Wincing, I crossed my fingers, hoping that the pre-order allocation would not be completely sold out by the time it reached me.
Rather generously, Starbucks Singapore allowed for a maximum of 5 cups per pre-order. Wasting no time, I selected a quantity of 4 cups (I was also queueing on behalf of a few friends), then tapped my way through the payment screens as fast as I could until I reached the order confirmation screen heralding my success.
So... Was it worth it?
Cute merch is always worth it... though some definitely felt more satisfying to queue for than others.
Most worth it: KFC x Mofusand (Lots of time and effort required, but very fairly run)
Most interesting: National Museum of Singapore stamp rally (Fun, cute, and fair redemption mechanics)
Most stressful: Chagee x Hello Kitty (Chagee HQ, if you're reading this, please communicate better next time)
Most well-run: Starbucks x Mofusand (Very organised, with order sheets to track stock levels and purchase entitlements)
Would I do it again?
Even though I'd never planned to make a hobby of queueing, I can't bring myself to regret the experiences I've had with it this year.
Despite the long hours of waiting and, occasionally, stress and frustration involved, nothing beats the surge of triumph I feel once I finally get my hands on the merch that I've been hunting for. As long as cute merch is up for grabs, I'll happily conquer my FOMO by making sure I'm in line on launch day.
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