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Do you remember your favorite hobby when you were a kid? It’s not surprising that most of us would answer playing with toys. Now, can you imagine how much money you could make if you did it for a living? While this situation may appear surreal, it is precisely the case for Ryan Kaji, a nine-year-old millionaire. This kid is a YouTube sensation with his channel entitled Ryan’s World. His net worth continues to grow as he releases new videos almost every day and even has his line of toys. Indeed, Ryan’s toy review has a lot to offer, especially when it comes to toys that kids would love. By watching his videos, you can see that Ryan is an expert in this field.
Who Is Ryan Kaji?
Ryan is a typical five-year-old. He enjoys playing with toy vehicles, riding tricycles, and sliding down water slides. Like most parents, his mother enjoys capturing and sharing these precious times. What makes Ryan unique is that his ordinary activities are streaming to hundreds of millions of other children across the world. His content includes unboxing a new action figure, visiting his favorite restaurant, or anything under the sun.
What’s with Toy Reviews?
Toy reviews on YouTube aren’t a new phenomenon. When children took over as hosts, the genre took off like a rocket. Families start to hit it big by uploading footage of their kids just playing games. According to some statistics, top YouTube channels feature kids in the media and focus on toys. While Ryan’s stream is part of a growing pattern, it has expanded to a size unmatched by almost anything before it.
What is Ryan’s Toy Review?
As the channel’s name indicates, the concept is that Ryan evaluates toys. He does this review every week and accomplishes it with the help of his mom. It lets the viewers understand and get a grasp of the extent to which an ordinary child can share his opinions on a set of toys.
How Ryan’s Toy Review Started
Ryan’s Toy Review is the family’s YouTube channel that they launched in March 2015. Like most channels, it only gained little attention at its beginning. However, a few months later, the channel started gathering more views. From then on, the number of subscribers began to double with each passing day. Ryan’s mother, a high school teacher, decided to quit her job to devote her time to focus on the YouTube channel.
Rise to Fame
Ryan’s Toy Review continues to gain popularity, particularly in the United States. For the past years and counting, it has been a common household name. It has become so popular that it is now reaching through the different parts of the world and carries on to make its rounds across the world wide web. To date, his channel has been attracting more viewers than any household celebrity. That alone generates about millions of advertising revenue every month.
In less than two years, Ryan’s toy review has already gained millions of followers. This number is even more than the combined number of subscribers of the two channels that inspired it, Hulyan Maya and EvanTubeHD.
The Evolution
As time pass by, the concept of toy review has evolved into something very distinct. Fast forward to 2019, and the channel is no longer simply about Ryan playing with different toys. Ryan’s channel has mastered the art of this unusual and new genre. It is now a combination of personal vlogs mixed with unboxing videos, a dash of harmless childish pranks, and persistent, often overpowering capitalism. Thus, the family moved forward and renamed his channel Ryan’s World.
Views that Lead to Ryan’s World
Losing Its Rawness
The family has completely abandoned the illusion of Ryan playing with specific toys in more recent videos. Increasingly, the videos shifted their natural and raw footage, and it seems that Ryan is reading from a script.
Exaggerated Marketing
Moreover, you can see the channel frequently cramming the names of almost five toys into each video’s title. Not only that but the description can also be made hundreds of words long, each having dozens of external links to branded products.
In other words, the success of Ryan’s Toy Review means there is more money for well-established businesses. Before the YouTube phenomenon, there is no other way for any kid’s usual antics to be marketed and aired to hundreds of people each week without getting into a formal deal with a large network.
Child Labor Concerns
Today, an ordinary family may manage a highly profitable business from the comfort of their home. This situation poses a slew of significant and challenging concerns, particularly in child labor. These guidelines limit how many hours a day young kids like Ryan can work in typical film and television projects. However, for Ryan’s employment on YouTube, there are no such regulations.
According to the Texas Workforce Commission, when a legal custodian or parent owns or operates a business, they may employ their children at any age and for any number of hours. This condition applies as long as the work is non-prohibited and the child is under the guardian’s direct supervision.
A Conflict for Viewers
A consistent style of Ryan’s video shows unboxing of toy pieces. He then arranges them and begins playing in front of the camera. However, on his succeeding videos, everyone was able to notice a significant expansion with his number of toys. This exaggeration continues for several videos, leading to a conflict towards their viewers. Ryan constantly gets handed hundreds of toys all at once, which is almost impossible in reality. As most of his videos include dozens of toys in a single episode, it significantly impacted children who watch his videos. Parents start to worry about their children wanting the same.
Moreover, we can barely watch Ryan play with each item for a few seconds. By the conclusion of the content, he’s sifting through a big mound of newly opened and rapidly discarded toys, dumping them on top of one another. The video quality is stagnant and somewhat sluggish, with a single shot lasting for almost ten minutes. Ryan will then take his time creating and playing. Afterward, he waves goodbye and ends the clip.
The Kaji’s Approach
Ryan’s parents, to their credit, appear to be taking a reasonable approach towards child labor. In an interview with Ryan’s mother, she explains that publishing a new video every day does not mean that they film daily. She adds that their recording happens only twice or thrice every week.
Unlike other child YouTubers, Ryan tends to have a reasonably regular schedule. Furthermore, Ryan’s mom emphasizes that their channel does not disrupt any of his school routines. Most of the filming takes place over the weekend, which means editing and publishing are done by his mom when he’s at school.
YouTube Stardom vs. Parenting
One thing we continuously wonder is what parents should think of Ryan’s YouTube channel? On the one hand, the never-ending supply of toys Ryan receives appears to be enough to spoil any youngster. On the other side, the channel claims to donate the majority of the items to charity subsequently. While Ryan’s on-camera antics might appear staged or forced for some of his videos, he mostly seems to be a child having a good time.
Growing Up
Now that Ryan is growing up, his mother makes sure that he’s in command of what he wants. It means they’ll keep filming as long as he enjoys it and it doesn’t interfere with his daily routines. When he is no longer having fun, though, it is time to call it a day.
Kaji Family YouTube Channel
Ryan’s family has launched a second channel that is more akin to a typical vlog. This channel is more about conveying the depth of their family’s day-to-day routine, the joys of life itself, rather than merely unboxing and reviewing new toys. Today, Ryan may be the youngest YouTube sensation. But his twin sisters might already be getting a head start. Their first appearance on the site was when they were only weeks old, much younger when Ryan started his channel.
Our Verdict
Dealing with a YouTube channel review is uncommon territory for us. But if there is one thing we’re concerned about, it is how Ryan can cope with his rising fame. These toy reviews he is making are now worth a lot of money, and giving them up might be difficult. If Ryan were to ask his parents to stop filming him, or if he had the maturity to communicate how he feels about being videotaped all the time, would he be comfortable doing so?
It’s easy to be pessimistic about the family’s newfound wealth. However, for a lot of parents, balancing job and family life is a continual challenge. Besides, wouldn’t it be great for you to ensure your children’s financial security just by interacting with them in front of the camera?
References:
https://www.businessinsider.com/8-year-old-youtube-star-ryan-toysreview-made-22-million-2019-10