• Toy manufacturers pay young celebrities to play with their products. Rates can range anywhere from $75,000 to more than $300,000, according to a person familiar with such deals.
Vlad, Niki, Diana and Nastya party on a yacht, ride a Ferrari and travel the world. Their massive audience of fellow kids can't get enough.
Three years ago, the YouTubers who go by Vlad, Niki, Diana and Nastya were friends cruising around Miami on a 97-foot yacht to celebrate a birthday. Today, they are locked in a fierce rivalry over YouTube supremacy.
They are not even 10.
The kids are the stars of three YouTube channels—"Vlad and Niki," "Like Nastya" and "Kids Diana Show." They are the three most popular live-action YouTube kids channels in the world, with nearly 300 million YouTube subscribers between them. Now they're expanding into everything from streaming shows to branded toys to licensing deals that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
"These kids who came from nowhere have more influence than Mickey Mouse," says Eyal Baumel, a longtime strategist for YouTube personalities, including "Like Nastya."
Across three channels, videos play like a live-action cartoon in a suburban fantasy land. Kids dress up like superheroes, crawl on giant vegetables and ride around in motorized toy cars. Mom and Dad are sidekicks.
The more success the children have, the more attractive the toys and excursions become. In one video, Vlad and Nikki reprimand Mom and the Range Rover she's decked out in fluffy pink boas for a ride in Dad's hot red Ferrari. Maldives where children and parents board a yellow submarine.
The videos feature lots of "oohs," "ahhs," applause and minimal dialogue—which makes it easy to re-dub YouTube posts into other languages, including Arabic, Spanish or Indonesian, which are mostly English.
"The kids think Vlad and Niki are their friends," their mother, Victoria Vashketov, says of her children, who are 9 and 7, respectively.
Toy manufacturers pay young celebrities to play with their products. Rates can range anywhere from $75,000 to more than $300,000, according to a person familiar with such deals.
YouTubers also have exclusive lines of playthings branded with their name and likeness. A Capped Vlad action figure and palm-sized statues of Diana's entire family, according to representatives from the channels, can be purchased at large US retailers such as Walmart and Target, as well as in countries including Sweden and Mongolia.
Shenzhen, China-based Zuru Toys produced a special line of "Vlad and Nicky" toys in 2020 after partnering with the family. The company's co-founder, Nick Mowbray, says he got into business with the boys because they appeal globally.
Major streaming services are putting the video on platforms including HBO Max and Amazon.
"You can create a global franchise without a major studio," says Dan Weinstein, who represents "Vlad and Niki" under the banner of his company Underscore Talent and has helped propel other internet sensations to traditional media channels. I think it's pretty mind-blowing to even think about."
timing is everything
At the time Vlad, Niki, Diana, and Nastya were young children, iPads were becoming the new babysitters and videos of kids unboxing new toys on camera were taking over kids content on YouTube.
Among the young celebrities influencing consumer behavior was Evan from EvanTubeHD, a toy and gaming YouTuber who began posting videos featuring Angry Birds toys at age 5 and became one of the first child YouTubers to achieve stardom on the platform. Gone. Ryan Kazee—often hailed as the reigning kid king of YouTube—was reviewing popular toys like Thomas the Tank Engine and raking in the millions. He created a formula for the kind of video that could garner millions of views: Give an adorable kid a coveted name-brand toy, film him playing with it, then post it.
All three families leaned on that formula.
Vlad and Niki's parents began making videos outside their home in Moscow. Sergei Vashketov was a mid-level executive at a food manufacturer; Victoria, a former gymnast. The opening video, which is in Russian, shows Vlad and Niki having fun with Coca-Cola bottles and life-size bags of M&Ms and Skittles.
Nastya, whose full name is Anastasia Radzinskaya, comes from Krasnodar, Russia. Her parents say they started posting videos of their daughter on YouTube to show off her speaking skills after a doctor wrongly diagnosed her with cerebral palsy and said she might never speak. Gave. Some of Nastya's first videos show her playing with Legos and opening a Disney-themed mystery egg.
Diana's parents—Olena and Volodymyr Kidisyuk—began making videos from their home in Kyiv, Ukraine, showing their daughter and older daughter on camera.
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