Houlihan Bakery Collaborates With SpongeBob SquarePants to Spotlight Background Character "Passerby Fish"
Houlihan's SpongeBob collaboration puts an anonymous background character front and centre, with two flavoured pastry lines and Weibo mock-news promotion.
Houlihan (好利来), the Chinese bakery chain, has launched a co-branded product series with SpongeBob SquarePants (海绵宝宝), centred not on the show's main cast but on a minor background character known as "Passerby Fish" (路人鱼). The collaboration goes on sale on September 17, 2026.
The range comprises two product lines: "Leisurely Lying Fish" (悠闲躺躺鱼), flavoured with pineapple, sea salt and coconut, and "Cute Fish Sandwich Biscuit" (萌鱼夹心酥), available in cheese sea salt and cod sea salt variants. Each product comes with a "Passerby Fish PET Plug-in" (路人鱼 PET 插件) accessory featuring a magnetic design that detaches for use as a refrigerator magnet.
The campaign is being promoted on Weibo through a branded content format called "Haomeiyummy News Broadcast" (好美味新闻台), in which product and character information is presented as a mock news bulletin.
Building the collaboration around an obscure supporting character rather than SpongeBob or Patrick Star is a deliberate positioning choice, tapping into audience affection for overlooked or unremarkable figures — a sensibility that travels well on Chinese social media, where content celebrating the mundane and the peripheral has an established following. The mock-news broadcast format on Weibo extends this understated tone into the campaign's creative execution.
