Decades ago, TV had become the new babysitter and now YouTube with it’s endless channels has taken the crown – PB/TK
The YouTubers Making Six Figures Off Your Toddlers – By Luke Winkie / May 21 2017
Ms. Hands (who asks I keep her real name private) uploads a video a day to each of her three channels: Fizzy Toy Show, Fizzy Fun Toys, and ZigZag Toys. Today, she is rescuing Boss Baby and the Smurfs from Gargamel’s Dragon. The toys are carefully organized on a clean living room table, and her palms are stretched out in front of the camera to introduce our crisis. The dragon is threatening to eat Boss Baby and the Smurfs alive. As usual, the only way we can stop him is by opening more toys.
The plot is entirely tertiary—a simple angle to get shiny things in front of five-year olds. So, a plushie Boss Baby gets a pair of Num Nom Lights Mystery Packs (a line of small, scented chibis that retail for $7 a pop at your local Target). Smurfette receives a Hello Kitty Chocolate Surprise Egg (with a Hello Kitty magnet inside), and Ms. Hands squeezes a Thomas the Tank Engine gummy, which she ranks a “10 out of 10” on her homebrew “squish meter.”
The video is 13 minutes long, which is the perfect length to maximize profits from YouTube’s advertisement algorithms. This is the seventh Boss Baby-centric episode she’s released this week, standing shoulder to shoulder alongside previous entries like “Don’t Wake Boss Baby! Trolls Smurf Play and Try Not Wake The Bad Crying Baby,” or “Boss Baby Opens Lots of LOL Surprise Dolls Spit, Cry, or Tinkle.” The customer is always right, and in this particular moment in the spring of 2017, the customers want Boss Baby.
In a sense, Ms. Hands is a professional pantomimer—she plays with toys the way all parents do when they’re desperate to keep a young child sated. But she’s also broadcasting to a one million subscriber count. In a single day, the dragon video has racked up 190,000 views, which is low compared to the 1.7 million views on last week’s “Greedy Grandma Chef Game! Trolls & Boss Baby Try to Get Food and Not Wake Granny!”
Continue to thedailybeast.com article: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/21/youtube-toy-channels-target-kids-who-watch-instead-of-play
