6-Year-Old YouTube Millionaire Brings Toy Line To Walmart
Remember Ryan, the wunderkind who made millions of dollars reviewing toys on YouTube? On Aug. 6, the plucky 6-year-old behind Ryan Toys Review will launch Ryan’s World, his own line of toy and apparel at Walmart and on the store’s website.
The deal for an undisclosed amount of money will expand Ryan’s YouTube channel “into a true global kids franchise,” said Chris M. Williams, CEO and founder of pocket.watch, which brokered the deal.
The toys and apparel will be available available at 2,500 Walmart stores nationwide and will expand to other retailers in October, according to the announcement. Ryan may even make a few guest appearances at events around the country to promote the new line.
Ryan, whose last name and precise location in the United States aren’t revealed his YouTube channel, earned more than $11 million reviewing toys in 2016, according to Forbes, which ranked him among the world’s top YouTube earners. His rise to fame and fortune began in 2015 with a single video. The Ryan Toys Review channel now has more than 15 million subscribers.
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He’s a typical kid who “loves toys,” according to the description of the channel, which features toy reviews “for kids by a kid.”
SEE ALSO: 6-Year-Old Earns $11 Million Reviewing Toys
In an interview on TubeFilter, Ryan’s parents said he was looking at other toy review channels that had Thomas The Tank Engine reviews and asked why he didn’t have his own toy review channel.
“So we just decided — yeah, we can do that,” his mom said. “Then, we took him to the store to get his very first toy — I think it was a Lego train set — and it all started from there.”
Also, his dad said, many in Ryan’s extended family live outside the United States, so the YouTube channel was “a great way to share childhood memories with them” and “a great way for us to spend more time as a family and to bond with him.”
Within four months of the launch of the channel, the family noticed a spike in viewership. Every month, the views doubled — mainly among kids ages 3-7. Most of the viewers live in the United States, but Ryan also has followers in the Philippines and the United Kingdom.
Ryan’s mother, formerly a high school chemistry teacher, quit her job to focus on the channel full-time, she said. Neither she nor her husband, a structural engineer, had any previous video experience and “we’ve learned everything as we’re going.”
Ryan doesn’t keep all the toys the family buys for his reviews.
“We give a lot of them away to friends and family,” his mom said, “and also a lot of them away to charity.”
Now, Ryan’s YouTube channels get about 1 billion views a month.
Pocket.watch, a virtual entertainment company geared toward kids, has negotiated licensing deals for other online video stars, but Ryan’s is the first to come to market. Ryan is the creative director of the new company and worked alongside pocket.watch to hand-select the products he’s most passionate about.
His merchandise is geared for kids 3 and older and features 15 collectable toys — including his own line of slime and stuffed animals — and four different T-shirts featuring designs of his favorite things.
“This is the first time that a YouTube star in the children and family space has created their own dedicated line of toys and apparel, and we are excited to be partnering with pocket.watch to have it available at Walmart stores nationwide,” Anne Marie Kehoe, Walmart’s vice president and divisional merchandise manager for toys said in a news release.
“Ryan’s World is the perfect combination of everything that Ryan loves and is inspired by,” said Shion, a member of the Ryan Toys Review family. “We are thrilled with how our partnership with pocket.watch is growing and extending the Ryan Toys Review brand and the launch at Walmart is a huge win bringing Ryan products to Ryan’s fans through the biggest retailer in the country.”
For Ryan’s latest toy review, play the video at the top of this story.
Photo and video via Ryan Toys Review YouTube channel