- Now in the Walmart aisles: a Skibidi toilet action figure — a $45 mystery toilet.
- The head of brands for toilet maker Bonkers Toys says it’s selling well.
- You’re bound to see more and more YouTube meme-related toys in the hallways.
Recently at my local Walmart, I saw a massive display in the main aisle of the toy section: it featured a plastic toilet, about a foot tall, with a dirty head sticking out. For $44.95, I can be the proud owner of Skibidi toilet — complete with toilet bowl-themed toys.
And in case you’re wondering: Yes, it makes a frying noise.
If you’ve spent any time lately around someone who isn’t old enough to drive, you’ve probably heard some uttering of the word “the skibid.” I’ll spare you the full rundown of the Gen Alpha meme, but the short form is: It’s a YouTube series about a dystopian battle of good and evil (toilet boys are the villains). My colleague Lindsay Dodgson describes it as “Part Terminator, part Bladerunner and obviously, part toilet,” she says the series is actually good.
What’s interesting to me is that this absurd toilet meme seems to be doing solid business in the toy aisle of your local discount store.
I spoke with Dan Meyer, head of brand at Bonkers Toys, the company behind the flush. “Right away we noticed it was blowing up,” Meyer said of the online skibidi phenomenon. Bonkers struck a licensing deal and began placing vendors on the toilet toy — an easy sell, he said. Bonkers began prototyping the toilet toy in early 2024 — and it hit shelves in time for the holiday season, a tight deadline.
“When we’re presenting it [retailers]we had enough data to see that in secondary and primary schools, the term the skibid it was already a thing,” Meyer said. Bonkers could point to the YouTube views the Skibidi Toilet series racked up — his channel has more than 40 million followers — or how if they searched Instagram, they’d find “hundreds of hundreds” of people wearing homemade Skibidi toilet suits.
Bonkers Toys, founded in 2017 in San Diego, has carved a niche for itself by licensing intellectual property from YouTube creators. Her first big toy was the giant “mystery egg” toy for Ryan’s World. At the time, Ryan’s World was one of the top channels on YouTube, a pioneer in the “toy opening toy” genre.
The Skibidi toilet is marketed as a “mystery surprise toilet” by Bonkers Toys. Bonkers toys
Bonkers’ move into memes is in line with what retailers are trying to achieve, Blake Droesch, a senior retail analyst with BI sister company Emarketer, told me.
He said big box stores like Walmart are trying to respond quickly to online trends, especially for toys. They need to move quickly to compete with viral acquisitions with Temu. “This environment has certainly created demand for manufacturers who can produce quick and cheap products that will serve this growing market,” he said. “It’s not unlike fast fashion, but for toys. They react quickly to viral moments and get products on the shelves while the trend is still hot.”
The original Skibidi toilet was the creation of animator Alexey Gerasimov, who made it for his YouTube channel DaFuq!?Boom!, which has 44.3 million subscribers. Gerasimov has collaborated with Invisible Narratives, a company founded by Adam Goodman, former president of DreamWorks SKG and Paramount Pictures, which works with YouTube creators to help them transition to more traditional media, such as film and TV. It also helps them with licensing their brands for merchandise, like Skibid’s deal with Bonkers.
Merchandising, as with toys from Bonkers Toys, is critical to success for these new media brands, he said.
“We believe that young people don’t want to pay for content anymore,” Goodman told Business Insider. “Their parents pay for subscriptions and don’t go to the cinema like they used to – but they like to buy things.”
The Toilet Squid is certainly not the first YouTube creation to venture into consumer goods. MrBeast sells chocolates and packed lunches alongside Logan Paul and KSI, who make the popular Prime drink.
The plush toy version of the Skibidi Toilet is also made by Bonkers Toys. Bonkers toys
Meyer wouldn’t give numbers on how many toilets they’ve sold, but so far things look promising, he said. He said the launch of a LankyBox themed product by Bonkers about three years ago – which was another product focused on a YouTube creator – was one of the “biggest and most successful brands in boy action” in discount, including Walmart. . He said the Skibidi toilet was outselling the LankyBox by about double. (Walmart did not respond to requests for comment on the sales numbers.)
Right now, there are only a few Skibidi Toilet-themed products from Bonkers: individual action figures, minifigures, plushies (aw, cool), and the aforementioned “mystery” toilet, which includes stickers, minifigures, and ropes. But there will be more products for next year, Meyer said — including what every little boy and girl dreams of getting from Santa: a remote-controlled toilet.
Correction: November 8, 2024 — In the Skibidi Toilet YouTube series, the toilet guys are the bad guys, not the good guys.