The closest toys to Shopkins nearly all come from the same company. Moose Toys made the Trash Pack in 2011, Shopkins in 2014 and the Grossery Gang in 2016, and the only one of those still in production is Real Littles. If you want the gross, garbage-themed version, that is the Grossery Gang. If you want something you can buy new today, Real Littles and ZURU’s Mini Brands are the two live options. Shopkins itself ran 17 seasons and ended in 2023 — and the 2026 “comeback” you may have seen is brand marketing, not restocked shelves.
One distinction worth drawing before you shop: Shopkins are collectibles, where the point is how many you accumulate. A Polly Pocket-style compact is the opposite — a single self-contained world that snaps closed and travels. Our guide to toys like Polly Pocket covers that format specifically, including which current sets keep the sub-inch figure and which only look the part.
What are Shopkins?
Shopkins are tiny collectible figures shaped like supermarket goods, each with a face — a broccoli with eyelashes, a cupcake with a grin. Moose Toys, an Australian company, released the first ones in June 2014, sold in blind bags so you did not know which characters you were getting.
The size is the thing people underestimate. A standard Shopkin is about 1 inch tall and half an inch wide — roughly the footprint of a US quarter. That is small enough to vanish into a car seat and small enough to matter for the age rating, which we come back to below.
Are Shopkins discontinued? What happened to them?
Yes. Moose Toys confirmed in July 2023 that Shopkins would not be part of its Fall 2023 lineup, and no new mainline season has been released since. The line ran 17 seasons from 2014 to 2023. In January 2026 Moose updated the Shopkins page on its own website to state the brand had been discontinued.
Then it got confusing, which is worth spelling out because our sources do not agree and one of them is the encyclopedia entry most people will read first.
In April 2026 Shopkins started appearing on Instagram and TikTok again. Moose Toys opened a separate TikTok account just for Shopkins, added the name back into its main profile, and on 6 May 2026 posted a video captioned “We’re in our nostalgia-era and reliving the early days… now it’s your turn!” The Wikipedia entry summarizes this as a comeback.
We would not call it that yet, and here is the distinction we think matters to a parent: brand activity is not the same as product on shelves. What is confirmed is a marketing push and nostalgia content. What is not confirmed is a new mainline season at retail scale like the ones that ran from 2014 to 2023. If you are reading “Shopkins are back” and picturing a Target aisle, check current listings before you promise anything to a child. If new sets do arrive, this page gets updated with the date.
How many Shopkins are there?
There is no official master count, and any single number you see quoted should be treated as an estimate. What is documented: 17 seasons released between 2014 and 2023. The manufacturer’s own material describes “hundreds” of characters, and collector databases commonly put the all-in figure above 1,000 once you include every season.
The reason nobody publishes one clean number is that counting is genuinely ambiguous. The same character is released in different finishes — standard, glitter, translucent, metallic — and collectors disagree about whether those are separate Shopkins or the same one. On top of that, some releases were regional, so a set sold in Australia or the UK was not identical to the US release. Spin-off ranges such as the Cutie Cars and the Real Littles add more figures again, depending on whether you count them as Shopkins at all.
The practical answer for anyone trying to “complete a collection”: you cannot, and no one has. Pick a season or a theme and complete that instead.
Toys like Shopkins: what each one actually is
Four of the six lines below came out of Moose Toys, the same company that made Shopkins. That is not a coincidence — Moose kept iterating on one idea for over a decade. Status is as of August 2026.
| Line | Maker | Launched | Status now | Format |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopkins | Moose Toys | 2014 | Ended 2023 | Blind bags, ~1″ grocery items |
| Real Littles | Moose Toys | 2019 | In production | Micro backpacks, lockers, handbags with working stationery inside |
| The Grossery Gang | Moose Toys | 2016 | Ended | Blind packs, gross-out food characters |
| The Trash Pack | Moose Toys | 2011 | Ended ~2014 | Rubber “Trashies” in mini trash cans |
| Mini Brands | ZURU | 2019 | In production | 5 Surprise capsule, ~1.5″ replicas of real products |
| Squinkies | Blip Toys | 2010 | Relaunched 2018 | Rubber figures inside plastic capsules |
Real Littles — the one that survived
Real Littles started inside Shopkins as a themed range in 2019, built around miniature versions of real branded products, and it outlived the parent line. It is the answer to “what do I buy if my child wants Shopkins and I cannot find any.” Moose is still shipping new seasons: backpacks, handbags, lockers, Disney-licensed sets, scented ranges. The hook is that the micro stationery inside actually works — tiny pens that write, tiny notebooks that open.
The Grossery Gang — note the spelling
It is Grossery, not “Grocery” — the whole name is a pun, and searching the wrong spelling is why some people never find it. Moose launched it in 2016 as a spin-off of the Trash Pack and a deliberate parody of its own Shopkins line, under the slogan “Your Shoppin’s Gone Rotten!” Same grocery-aisle idea, except everything is moldy, oozing or infested.
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The Trash Pack — where the garbage theme started
This came first, in 2011, three years before Shopkins. The figures are called Trashies, they are molded in soft rubber rather than hard plastic, and they were sold inside miniature wheelie bins — which doubled as the tidiest storage solution any of these lines ever had. The range ran to around 2014 and fed directly into the Grossery Gang.
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Mini Brands — the one that took the crown
Not from Moose. ZURU launched Mini Brands in 2019 and it is now by some distance the biggest line in this format — miniature replicas of real supermarket products, around 1.5 inches, five to a 5 Surprise capsule. If Shopkins was cartoon groceries with faces, Mini Brands is the opposite bet: the joke is that the tiny thing looks exactly like the real branded product. For a child who liked Shopkins for the hunt rather than the faces, this is the closest live equivalent.
Squinkies — smaller, squishier, back from the dead
Blip Toys released Squinkies in 2010, four years ahead of Shopkins: soft rubber figures sealed inside clear plastic capsules. The line went out of production and Blip brought it back in 2018 with a squishier formulation. Smaller and simpler than a Shopkin, and the capsule packaging means fewer loose pieces on the floor.
Is there a boys’ version of Shopkins?
The Grossery Gang is the one people mean. Moose Toys built it in 2016 on the same blind-pack collectible model as Shopkins but themed around rotten food, mold and slime, and it skewed noticeably toward boys. Worth being accurate, though: Moose did not market it as “the boys’ Shopkins” — it was sold as the gross alternative, and plenty of girls collected it.
If the gross-out angle is the appeal, the Trash Pack above is the same idea one generation earlier and is often cheaper secondhand because it is less sought after. Both are out of production, so you are shopping the resale market either way.
What to check before you buy
- Take the choking warning literally at this size. A one-inch figure half an inch wide is squarely a small part. The US rule is 16 CFR Part 1501, which bans small parts in toys intended for children under three: a part counts as small if it fits entirely, in any orientation and uncompressed, into a test cylinder 2.25 inches long by 1.25 inches wide, standing in for the throat of a child under three. Every line on this page clears that cylinder easily. Check the age on the pack rather than assuming, and think about younger siblings on the floor, not just the child receiving it.
- Blind bags mean duplicates. That is the business model, not bad luck. If your goal is a specific character, buying a sealed secondhand lot on eBay is usually cheaper per figure than chasing it through single packs.
- On secondhand lots, count the pieces in the photo. These lines are all out of production except Real Littles and Mini Brands, so most buying now is resale. Listings that say “bundle” without a count are usually short of what the photo implies.
- Match the spelling before you search. Grossery Gang, not Grocery Gang. Trashies, not Trash Pack figures. Getting these wrong is the single most common reason people conclude a line is impossible to find.
If you are shopping the animal-figure side of the mini-collectible aisle rather than the grocery theme, our guide to toys similar to Calico Critters covers those — full families with furniture, sold as known sets rather than blind bags.
FAQs
Are Shopkins worth anything?
Common Shopkins are worth very little individually — they were sold in blind bags by the million. Value concentrates in limited editions, ultra-rare finishes and complete sealed sets. A loose bag of mixed commons is a toy, not an investment, and pricing it that way will save you disappointment.
What age are Shopkins for?
The packs were rated for ages five and up. Plenty of younger children played with them under supervision, but five is the number on the box, and the reason is the small-parts rule above rather than the difficulty of the play.
Where can I buy Shopkins now?
Resale only for the mainline seasons: Amazon third-party sellers, eBay, Mercari and secondhand marketplaces. New stock at Target or Walmart under the Shopkins name has not been a mainline release since 2023. What you will find new on those shelves is Real Littles, which is the same company and the nearest current thing.
What replaced Shopkins?
Two answers depending on what you mean. Within Moose Toys, Real Littles replaced it and is still running. In the wider market, ZURU’s Mini Brands took over the mini-collectible category and is now the larger brand of the two.
Sources and verification
Launch years, season counts and discontinuation dates come from the published toyline records for Shopkins and the Trash Pack, cross-checked against trade press coverage of Moose Toys and ZURU and against the manufacturers’ own current product pages. Real Littles being in production is confirmed directly from Moose Toys’ own catalogue rather than from retailer listings. Figure dimensions and the 16 CFR Part 1501 small-parts test are quoted from the regulation and the manufacturers’ specifications; we recalculated nothing that we could not source.
Where the sources conflict, we have said so on the page rather than picking one. The 2026 Shopkins revival is the live example: the encyclopedia record calls it a comeback, while the underlying evidence is a marketing campaign with no confirmed mainline release, so we have described both and told you what to check. Two figures on this page were also corrected from an earlier version, which stated that Shopkins ran 14 seasons and ended in 2020. The documented record is 17 seasons ending in 2023.
