Inside the Booming Business of Adults Who Play With Toys on You. Tube. Earlier this year, my 5- year- old cousin sat down next to me with her mom’s i.

Phone to watch some of her favorite videos on You. Tube. The first thing she pulled up wasn’t a clip from her favorite TV show or a sing- a- long video, though; it was an unboxing video, one that showed adult hands playing with a set of miniature Japanese cooking toys, demonstrating how they could be played with in complete silence. Kelsey doesn’t know what ramen noodles are (she said, “look, pasta!”) but she’s eager to watch strange adults online play with toys she doesn’t have access to. Unboxing videos, especially of new technology, have been growing in popularity for the past few years—between 2. Google’s research team. And according to the video marketing consultants at Tubular. Insights, videos with the word “unboxing” in the title get an average of 1.

1. · Joe Amon/The Denver Post via Getty Images Connecticut: Lantern Light Tours. For 36 years, the town of Mystic has hosted a progressive performance, which.
2. Catch up on all the latest TV news, photos, videos, and opinion.
3. News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and the Best of Connecticut.
4. Internet star and TV personality Stevie Ryan, best known for YouTube channel and VH1 comedy series Stevie TV, was found dead Saturday.
5. Youtube Weight Loss Surgery Before And After - How To Burn Fat Without Going To The Gym Youtube Weight Loss Surgery Before And After As Seen On Tv Belly Fat Burner.
6. Earlier this year, my 5-year-old cousin sat down next to me with her mom’s iPhone to watch some of her favorite videos on YouTube. The first thing she pulled up.

You. Tube channels specifically devoted to unboxing toys are particularly popular. Take Ryan’s Toy Reviews, for example. The channel, which features videos of 4- year- old Ryan unboxing and playing with toys, launched in 2. By late November 2. You. Tube charts in popularity, receiving more views than any other channel—1. Ryan is even more popular than Justin Bieber. But Ryan, who is about the same age as his intended audience, is not the typical demographic represented in the stars of these videos.

Instead, many of the people unwrapping and playing with toys on You. Tube—voicing Barbies, Peppa Pig toys, Spongebob figures, and more—are adults. These channels aren’t some obscure trend hidden in random corners of the Internet. One, Fun Toys Collector, has more than 8.

You have not yet voted on this site! If you have already visited the site, please help us classify the good from the bad by voting on this site. KPIX 5 CBS San FranciscoConnect With Us At KPIX 5 PROGRAM GUIDE: KPIX 5 TV Schedule WATCH: A Glimpse Inside The Working KPIX 5 Newsroom Breaking News Send news tips. Charlotte's sports/talk station featuring CBS Sports and local team broadcasts.

The videos almost always feature adult voices—typically female, high- pitched, insanely enthusiastic, and a little whispery—giving voice to toy characters, their hands occasionally popping out from behind the camera to manipulate the dolls and other toys. Usually at least some of the toys are unboxed on- camera before they’re played with. A favorite channel among both my cousins and other pint- sized mental_floss friends is the saccharine Cookie. Swirl. C, which has nearly 3. Since its inception in late 2.

According to her site, “Cookie. Swirl. C is a collector of many toys including Shopkins, Barbie and Build- a- Bear,” and she started her channel “to share her passion of toys and creating stories through play.” She doesn’t take money from toy companies in exchange for coverage, and says on her site that she only features toys she herself collects. This isn’t her only channel.

The creator, who did not respond to multiple interview requests, started her toy- reviewing career with a channel focused on model horses, from Breyer figures to My Little Pony toys. She goes by the pseudonym Cookie on the Cookie. Swirl. C site, but on her horse- focused blog, Honey. Hearts. C, she refers to herself as Honey. Like many toy accounts, Honey. Watch Dark Exorcism Tube Free. Hearts. C—which has significantly fewer followers than her general toy channel, about 2.

In one typical video, two Barbies talk about how one of them dances with her horse—and cue the detailed description and unboxing of a “Barbie Dancing Fun Horse” toy. The narration sounds genuinely enthusiastic, like a kid opening presents on Christmas morning. The camera focuses lovingly on tiny details of the box. Sometimes the pictures depicting how the toy can be played with are narrated as if part of a playtime story, too.

The narrator dissects the colors of the Barbies’ hair, the brushability of the horses’ tails, the accessories, and more, interspersing directions for using the toys (how to place the Barbies on the horses, how to get the horse toys to walk) and imaginative play plots, like one in which one Barbie is anxious to catch up to the other rider, for instance. You sometimes see the creator’s hands—pink sparkly nail polish and all—but for the most part, the camera is angled to make the toys look like they move on their own. For Nathalie Clark, 3.

Mercy Casiano, 2. Toys Unlimited, the choice to start playing with toys on the Internet was an easy business decision. The two met as nurses working in Houston, and started their channel a year and a half ago when Nathalie spotted a story on Facebook about one toy collector’s wildly popular You. Tube channel. “I was like, ‘we can do this,’” Clark tells mental_floss. Now, thanks to You. Tube’s monetization option, Casiano has quit her job to work on the channel full- time, and Nathalie works only a few days a month.

Though plenty of You. Tubers in the toy world are avid collectors, Clark and Casiano, who go by the nicknames Nat and Essie in their videos, are all business. Clark has a 5- month- old who’s too young to appreciate their videos, and Casiano doesn’t have kids. Casiano says that while people assume they must love toys in real life, “That’s not the case in my situation. It was really just an opportunity.” It’s not hard to see how playing with toys on camera might be a preferable job to putting in long, stressful hours at a hospital. While they like being their own bosses, Clark and Casiano also feel like it’s a philanthropic endeavor: The pair donates the toys they buy or receive for the videos to pediatric hospitals in both Houston and in the Philippines, where Mercy went to nursing school.

Unfortunately, the realities of making You. Tube your full- time job aren’t as glamorous as they might sound.

If you want to become a You. Tuber, it’s extremely competitive,” Casiano explains. You have to put out at least one video every day. I feel like it’s more of a quantity over putting the best quality you can.” Instead of nursing, the duo works 1. They typically post around 1. The extreme competition for clicks might be why I found You. Tubers so hard to track down.

Of the multiple emails I sent out to 1. You. Tube creators, many of whom have millions of followers, I received only two responses (aside from one that came in an unusable form of broken English). Apparently, many toy You. Tubers are either loath to talk about their job or exceedingly busy, and based on the people I was able to track down, the latter feels like a legitimate excuse.

It’s hard to find time for an interview when you can’t even take a full weekend off. But it’s still a pretty good business, if your channel is popular enough. With a little help from Google Translate and the basic Spanish I learned in high school, I emailed with Javier Pombo, a 3. Watch Sniper: Reloaded Online Facebook. A Caruña, Spain who runs a channel called Toys & Games.