Toy unboxing

Since 2013, the most common subject of unboxing videos has been toy unboxing. Tanya Basu of Mental Floss stated that creators of unboxing videos were "notoriously difficult to reach and private". The highest earning YouTuber of 2014 was adult unboxing creator DisneyCollectorBR who The New York Times reported was a 21-year-old Brazilian named Melissa Lima living in Westchester County, New York. Lima's channel, renamed to FunToyzCollector, became the third most viewed on YouTube in 2015 with more than 8 billion views and an estimated advertising revenue between $2 million and $13 million a year. The most viewed toy related channel was Ryan ToysReview which had received more than 645 million views in March 2016 making it the second most viewed YouTube channel in that month after Justin Bieber. The 2020s saw the increase in popularity of Russian-American channels Vlad and Niki and Like Nastya and Ukrainian-American channel Kids Diana Show who according to R.T. Watson of The Wall Street Journal "leaned into [the] formula" created by EvanTubeHD and Ryan Kaji. ==Content==

According to Stuart Dredge of The Guardian, Disney and Lego products are some of the most reviewed on popular toy channels and so they were unlikely to be critical of the trend. Additionally, 24% of the videos featuring children included their friends or siblings. In terms of gender, the research found that 36% of children were female, 52% were male, 28% of adults were female and 51% were male with the remainder being undetermined due to disembodied videos featuring only their hands and no commentary. In terms of the age of the children featured, the researchers discerned that 17% were 2 to 4 years old, 74% were 4 to 11 years old and 9% were 12 to 18 years old. ==Effects==

In 2018, The Guardian reported on a Los Angeles summer camp called LA Star Education which taught children how to become YouTubers by making toy unboxing videos. Lois M. Collins of Deseret News described unboxing as one of the "most powerful" forms of advertising in 2022 and cited assistant and associate professors of communication Jason Freeman and Frank E. Dardis who stated that when the target was kids, child influencers had "enormous persuasive power" becoming like "beloved friends". The communication professors added that children may not understand that child influencers such as Ryan Kaji, who are earning money by playing with toys, are being provided toys for free by companies so that they can promote them. ==See also==