Like most pre-school children, Ryan loves playing with toys – from cars, trains and Lego to Disney toys, Play-Doh and Minions. Unlike most pre-school children, he’s playing with those toys for an online audience of millions.
Ryan is the young star of Ryan’s Toys Review, a YouTube channel with more than 2.5 million subscribers and 4bn video views – startling figures given that his channel only launched in March 2015.
Ryan’s toy reviews are so popular that he was the second biggest channel on YouTube in March 2016 according to online-video industry site Tubefilter, which uses data from analytics firm OpenSlate.
He may soon be topping that chart: in March, Ryan’s 645.2m video views were only slightly less than Justin Bieber’s 646.2m views that month.
There are plenty more toy channels where Ryan sprang from: toy reviews and unboxings are one of the biggest genres on YouTube.
Twenty of the top 100 channels are focused on toys: Disney Car Toys Club, Fun Toyz Collector, Toy Monster, Toys and Funny Kids Surprise Eggs, CookieSwirlC, Blu Toys, Hobby Kids TV and Disney Car Toys all join Ryan in the top 50.
Between them, these 20 channels racked up 4.7bn video views in March alone, capitalising on the massive amount of children flocking to YouTube.
Children may love watching toy unboxings, but not everyone is so happy with this trend. Criticism of the YouTube Kids app launched by Google in 2015 has included concerns about whether toy channels blur the boundaries between TV and advertising too much.
There is more to the burgeoning world of children’s YouTube channels than toys, though. British Minecraft gamer Dan “The Diamond Minecart” Middleton had the 12th biggest YouTube channel in March with 337.4m views, for example. He is now building his online popularity into offline income with a sold out UK tour.
Nine nursery rhyme channels are in the YouTube top 100 chart, headed by another British channel – sixth-placed Little Baby Bum – with its 492.4m March views. Baby Big Mouth (322.9m views) and ChuChu TV (318.5m) are also riding high.
Russian cartoons are proving popular: Masha and the Bear was the eighth biggest YouTube channel in March with 456.3m views, closely followed by ninth-ranked Get Movies with 418.4m views.
In total, 42 of YouTube’s 100 biggest channels that month were aimed at children, generating 10.3bn video views.
Only two of them came from well-known traditional kids’ brands: Disney Junior UK’s channel in 50th place on the Tubefilter chart with 200.7m views, and Lego’s channel in 63rd place with 169.9m.
It’s a sign of the strange new online-video world that those two Lego and Disney channels combined still fall nearly 275m views short of a child called Ryan playing with whatever toy his parents have surprised him with that week.
That said, Disney and Lego are among the most popular products reviewed on the big toy channels, so they are unlikely to be complaining too much about this trend.