Letters to Santa used to be filled with ideas from the Argos catalogue or adverts on children’s telly, but for today’s kids raised on “swiping and streaming” YouTube is their shop window – which is why some are asking for a plastic toilet this Christmas.
The stakes are high for the toy trade at this time of year as consumers spend about £900m on dolls, games and action figures, equal to a quarter of annual sales.
Without a big last-minute rush trade could finish down this year. So far spending is about 5% lower than in 2023, according to the data company Circana.
Whereas once upon a time a single ad slot on a Saturday morning could translate into a massive sales boost, today’s children are harder to reach en masse.
A traditional broadcast TV campaign struggles to reach more than 30% of a target kids audience. Meanwhile, more than 80% of four- to nine-year-olds access YouTube regularly and 70%-plus play games, according to research firm Childwise.
“Those terrestrial shows used to be huge,” says Melissa Symonds, the executive director of UK Toys at Circana. After one ad placed there “you’d get immediate sales”.
“It is all streaming now and for toys that reduces the number of ads in between,” she adds. “YouTube is a day-to-day part of kids’ lives. They can’t imagine not having it.”
The online video-sharing platform is increasingly seen as an alternative to traditional children’s TV – although it’s probably more accurate to say that the two are merging: lots of kids’ favourite shows are on YouTube in some form, while to young viewers – many on tablets – it’s all just “video”.
As a result “video” is taking over the living room telly. “Gen Z and Alpha are used to swiping and streaming, not flipping through broadcast TV channels,” says Ian Macrae, the Ofcom director of market intelligence, in its annual study of the nation’s media habits.
They spend more than three hours a day watching video, but only 20 minutes on live television, Macrae says, which is why “it’s no surprise that the traditional TV [set] is fast becoming a device of choice to watch YouTube”. In an average week of 2023, 68% of children aged four to 15 watched YouTube at home, according to Ofcom. Of these youngsters, 43% were watching it on TV.
Streaming has forced toy makers to think differently. Children’s shows have long featured characters that could be turned into toys but it is now more common for merchandising to be part of the plan at the outset. They are also getting into bed with popular YouTube creators, such as MrBeast and Skibidi Toilet (a sci-fi series about animated heads that live in toilets) to sell toys (or toilets).
When Spin Master, the company behind the toy and kids’ TV behemoth Paw Patrol, launched Unicorn Academy, based on the Julie Sykes books, in 2023 it started with a Netflix movie and series, and the toy unicorns followed.
At the time Spin Master described the “magical series” as the “tip of the iceberg”, slipping into business jargon to describe its plan for a “complete franchise ecosystem, that will dive deeper into the world of unicorns through ancillary content, toy play and consumer products for fans”.
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“We’ve all got very used to consuming content, whether it is film, TV, TikTok videos or Instagram reels,” says Rachael Simpson-Jones, the editor of Toy World magazine. “So a lot of successful toy ranges have accompanying content with whole storylines built around characters. It’s something kids have almost come to expect.”
YouTube, which like Google is part of the tech company Alphabet, is on a list with increasing sway over children’s tastes that also includes TikTok, Netflix and influencers, says Paul Reader, the chair of the selection committee that compiles the the Toy Retailers Association’s closely watched DreamToys list every Christmas.
While big toy brands such as Lego and LOL Surprise! Dolls have YouTube channels (the YouTube Kids app bars non-child-friendly ads) airing animation and movies that plug their toys, it is competing with an avalanche of “brain rot”, the term used to describe silly or bizarre videos that kids adore.
Skibidi Toilet, with 45 million YouTube subscribers, is in this camp. It was the sixth “buzziest” brand this summer among seven- to 17-year-olds, with memes and new videos going viral in recent months. Only the men’s Euro 2024 championship, Roblox, Fortnite, TikTok and YouTube were more talked about, according to Childwise.
The spin-off toys, which includes a £50 spring-loaded “mystery” toilet with a pop-up head inside, was one of the “hottest” launches of the year. “Toilet humour has always done well within toys,” says Symonds, with puerile brands such as Skibidi Toilet coming along every few years.
The speed of online trends means the toy industry has had to become more nimble – think fast fashion for toys – and for retailers, it can be difficult to know what will fly off the shelves.
“When you go back to the nostalgic days of TV advertised products there was a way of gauging how popular, or created demand, could be,” says Reader. “Nowadays, it’s so, so difficult. Children’s attitudes change so much. One minute they’re into Fortnite, then Skibidi Toilet, and then we’re back into Minecraft. It’s hard to keep up.”