YouTube unboxing channels have become the bane of most parents' existence. But the parents of Ryan Kaji are literally laughing all the way to the bank.
The eight-year-old YouTube star of Ryan's World managed to beat off the likes of PewDiePie and MrBeast to becoming the highest-earning YouTube star of 2019.
According to the annual YouTube creator earning estimates from Forbes, Kaji managed to amass $26-million. But that's not all, his family's production company Sunlight Entertainment also topped Forbes’ list last year with $22-million in estimated earnings.
Who exactly is Ryan Kaji and why is his YouTube channel so popular with kids? According to Variety, Ryan’s World launched in 2015 as a toy-unboxing channel called Ryan Toys Review.
In 2017, his family inked a deal with digital children’s media startup Pocket.watch, which landed a deal with Nickelodeon for TV show “Ryan’s Mystery Playdate” and has produced a line of Ryan’s World merchandise.
“We are a very good partner for our creator partners – we can provide advertising to our partners that YouTube can’t anymore,” Chris M. Williams, founder and CEO of Pocket.watch, told Variety.
The channel releases a new video every day, and one of its videos titled as "Huge Eggs Surprise Toys Challenge" has over 1.9 billion views as of November 2019, making it one of the 50 most viewed videos on YouTube.
The Verge even described the channel as "a mash-up of personal vlog and 'unboxing' video, a blend of innocent childhood antics and relentless, often overwhelming consumerism".
Below is a video listing Forbes’ list of top YouTube earners for 2019: