The Views: Ryan Conquers The World
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After almost a decade of YouTube videos, Ryan’s World, formerly known as Ryan ToysReview, has conquered practically every major milestone possible for a YouTube channel. Posting on the platform almost every day, the channel has amassed over 36 million subscribers and over 58 billion total views, with one of their videos in the top 50 most-viewed videos on YouTube ever. But how does a kid and his twin sisters achieve super stardom? How did Ryan become a face plastered on toys at Target before he hit double digits?
Handle: Ryan’s World can be found @RyansWorld on YouTube and @ryansworld on Instagram.
Series: The Ryan’s World YouTube channel features lots of playlists that divide up content based on franchises and genre. For example, there is a playlist dedicated specifically to superhero toys and another dedicated to Ryan’s family.
Creators: Ryan acts as the main protagonist of most of the channel’s videos with his twin sisters Emma and Kate and their parents sometimes appearing. Ryan’s parents Loann and Shion began the channel and run most of the behind the scenes, but as Ryan’s popularity has grown the Kaji’s have had more outside help. They founded Sunlight Entertainment, a production company, in 2017 to help streamline the channel’s workflow. Additionally, the Kajis have signed deals with companies like PocketWatch to market and create merchandise for Ryan's World.
Platform: Ryan’s World focuses primarily on YouTube content. Sunlight Entertainment has also experimented with more traditional media with Ryan’s World the Movie: Titan Universe Adventure having a limited domestic release in the United States in August 2024. The channel also has a corresponding Instagram account and a dedicated website.
Genre(s): Ryan’s World is aimed at preschool children, with the first videos on the channel being toy unboxings. The channel has added animated videos and some family vlogs as well. The family has shifted their content to focus on challenges, games, and family activities.
Subscribers: The Ryan’s World YouTube channel currently sits at 37.9 million subscribers and the corresponding Instagram page has 181K followers.
Like most three year olds his age, Ryan Kaji watched a lot of YouTube videos. One particular genre he was interested in were toy reviews. His mother, Loann, a highschool chemistry teacher, often monitored the content he was watching. One day, Ryan turned to his mom and asked, “How come I’m not on YouTube when all the other kids are?”. That’s how Ryan ToysReview was born.
Loann began buying her son toys which he would review. The oldest available video on the channel currently features Ryan picking out a “Lego choo-choo train” at Target with his mother before taking the toy home and playing with it. Loann goes over the age range the toy is meant for, the purpose of the toy, and its proper name, before allowing Ryan to unbox it. The rest of “Kid playing with toys Lego Duplo Number Train” shows Ryan discovering the many parts of the toy and figuring out how to put it together. His mother encourages him and gives him hints on what the train can be used for, seemingly to cultivate skills like counting.
Videos in the early days of Ryan ToysReview followed this same pattern. Ryan would go to Target or another toy store to get “Ryan’s Pick of the Week” before unboxing and playing with the item. Considering that Ryan became interested in reviewing toys because he saw other children viewing toys, the channel marketed itself to toddlers in his age range.
With the channel growing in popularity, Loann eventually quit her job to focus on its success. She and her husband began to feature more prominently in specific videos. Rather than remaining behind the camera like in “Kid playing with toys Lego Duplo Number Train”, Loann would put herself in front of the camera, sometimes playing with Ryan or participating in the challenge videos the channel would branch out to. Additionally, the thumbnails and video names for the channel began to grow more sophisticated and specific with bright yellow backgrounds and titles like “Giant Chupa Chups Lollipops Candy Review” and “Ryan opens Giant Superman Surprise Egg”.
Between 2016 and 2017, Forbes listed Ryan Kaji as the eighth highest-paid YouTube earning 11 million dollars. This was likely due to a deal the Kajis signed with PocketWatch, a startup children’s media company founded in 2016 by Chris Williams and former president of Nickelodeon, Albie Hecht. PocketWatch creates content for Generation Alpha by members of Generation Alpha. The company specifically searches for up and coming stars on platforms like YouTube to turn into international franchises. The Kajis made a great deal with PocketWatch, who continues to do the marketing and merchandising for the Ryan’s World brand. The last video with the “Ryans ToysReview” logo in the thumbnail was released in late October 2019, with “Ryan’s World” appearing as the logo going forward. However, it should be noted that the Ryan’s World branding appeared in videos prior to this date.
The shift in branding could come from a complaint filed by Truth in Advertising and the Federal Trade Commission in August 2019. According to Truth in Advertising “nearly 90 percent of Ryan ToysReview videos have included at least one paid product recommendation aimed at preschoolers, a group too young to distinguish between a commercial and a review.” As a result, the FTC sued YouTube and Google for $170 million dollars which then led to YouTube adopting new rules on children’s content in order to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
Shifting from Ryan ToysReview, which explicitly states the supposed purpose of the channel, to Ryan’s World, allows for the channel to not only make content outside of toy reviews, but to give plausible deniability from Truth in Advertising and the FTC’s claims. At the very least, this move would distance the brand from the lawsuit.
Despite these legal troubles, Forbes listed Ryan’s World as the highest-paid Youtube channel from 2018-2020 earning $22 million in 2018, $26 million in 2019, and $29.5 million in 2020 from the brand’s videos and product line. The deal with Pocket Watch led to this increase in revenue as the company began producing toys for the Ryan’s World brand. The YouTube channel has a variety of mascots and characters that fans of the show love, making them easy to produce as toys.
Apart from toys, PocketWatch helped expand Ryan’s World into an endless runner game for iOS and Android called Tag with Ryan in 2018. Additionally, Nickelodeon ordered twenty episodes of an improvised show titled Ryan’s Mystery Playdate that began airing in 2019. Created by Albie Hecht and produced by PocketWatch, the series ran until 2023 and lasted four seasons. Two more video games based on Ryan’s World were created specifically for console and PC, Race with Ryan, released in 2019, and Ryan’s Rescue Squad, released in 2022. A hybrid live-action and anime series for Amazon Kids+, Super Spy Ryan, released in 2020.
These ventures into traditional media are not only due to PocketWatch, but Sunlight Entertainment. Created by Shion and Loann Kaji in 2017, Sunlight Entertainment was founded to streamline the workflow of Ryan’s World. However, the company has led to Ryan’s World’s most creative endeavors yet.
Ryan’s World released its first feature film with a domestic theatrical release in August 2024. Ryan’s World the Movie: Titan Universe Adventure did not do well in theaters despite positive reviews from fans of the brand. This is likely due to its limited release of 2,000 theaters across the United States. Sunlight Entertainment helped produce the film alongside Albie Hecht, who also directed the film in his directorial debut. Sunlight Entertainment also collaborated with Toei Animation in 2023 to create Elemon, a series focused on teaching children about chemistry.
Though Ryan’s World still remains popular and continues to break records, time ticks on. Ryan Kaji is now thirteen years old and has spent a decade of his life on YouTube. Time will only tell if Ryan continues to conquer worlds. But for now, him, his family, and his massive team can happily say that they’ve conquered this one.
