Inside Henry Zhou’s Sticker Zoo
By Elise Ong, October 7, 2025
Students lined up across the Bronco Commons Sept. 25, awaiting a free sticker drop of the Cal Poly Pomona mascot from “the sticker guy.”
Henry Zhou, who has 35,000 followers on his Sticker Zoo Instagram, is an Asian American artist who is passionate about sharing his art to build community. According to his portfolio, he wants to “create the cutest animal and anime themed designs for merchandise you will love,” stemming from his childhood interests in Pokémon and Kirby.
Zhou is currently touring most University of California and California State University schools for his Animul Alumni tour, a title which he calls “a cheeky alliterative anagram,” to give away free stickers of the school mascots he reimagined. Those who follow his Instagram know students have been forming long lines before Zhou even arrives. Reels about his stops along this tour have been getting lots of traction online, the one from his CSU Long Beach visit having 204,000 views so far.
Zhou found inspiration for his sticker drops while he was a student at the University of California, Irvine, where someone did anonymous sticker drops in order to spread school spirit. After graduating, Zhou started a small business with hopes to do the same.
While visiting a friend, Zhou did a trial sticker drop at the University of California, Davis, to see if students would be interested in his work.
“I didn’t know how to grow an audience, but I did know that people like stickers,” Zhou said.
The response was lively, as students from other schools began to ask if he could come to their campus.
“I was like, let me give away some cow stickers, see if people like it,” Zhou said. “I made a video about it, people liked it, and they requested me to go to their schools. That’s kind of where it all started.”
For this particular tour, Zhou started working on designs around two and a half months ago in mid-July. He designed six varieties of stickers for each school inspired by their animal mascot. If the mascot wasn’t an animal, Zhou picked an animal to give details of the humanoid mascot to. Some of CPP’s “Bronnie,” a play-on name of the Billy Bronco mascot, designs feature a donut, boba tea, a basketball and a skateboard.
Computer information systems student Natalie Cano has been following Zhou for a few years and attended a drop from him her freshman year.
“I think they’re all really cute,” Cano said. “I really love them. I have one that has a pink little bow from a couple years ago, and I really like the sleepy bronco this time.”
Zhou estimated giving away around 4,000 free stickers so far, each costing slightly less than a dollar.
To combat the out-of-pocket costs of this tour, Zhou is also selling his products at some pop-up events happening near the schools he’s going to. In addition to his extensive selection of stickers, Zhou also sells keychains, enamel pins and prints of his art at these pop-ups.
At CPP, he attended ASI’s Bronco Marketplace. Biology student Eula Altamira bought stickers for herself and her family.
“At his booth, I got eight stickers,” Altamira said. “… I do collect stickers. I like putting them on my laptop and my water bottle, so I think it was really fun to see all those cute designs.”
In his artwork, Zhou often incorporates a diverse combination of cultures. For instance, many characters featured in his stickers are holding items from Asian cultures, such as Yakult, soju and boba tea. A lot of his stickers even feature characters with Asian origins, like Hello Kitty and friends, Totoro and Pokémon.
Having a mix of cultures in his artwork brings together different audiences, uniting them in the process. Zhou chose stickers as his main medium of art because he believes stickers unite people.
At the sticker drop, many students were standing off to the side, meeting new people and comparing the stickers they got, some even exchanging contact information.
“It’s just the most relatable, low-cost and fun item to have for people,” Zhou said. “It’s collectable. People like having different variants of something, and stickers (are) the easiest medium to express that artistically.”
Anyone who misses out on his in-person events is able to purchase his products on his website, linked in his Instagram bio, which will open again after he completes his tour.
In the future, Zhou hopes to bring his artwork and the community it creates outside of California and encourages anyone who might be interested in this form of art to try their hand at it.
