In spring 2023, DaFuq!?Boom! became one of the most-watched YouTube channels in the entire world. Between January and May, it shot from getting 3 million views a month to nearly 3 billion, and cemented one word in the minds of all those hundreds of millions of viewers:
Skibidi.
Plagued by recurring nightmares of hands and heads coming out of toilets, Russian animator Alexey Gerasimov (the creator behind DaFuq!?Boom!) had decided to exorcise them by turning them into short animated clips. In the very first, 11-second Skibidi Toilet video, the viewer swings through what looks like an office building (complete with tiny suited man) and into its bathroom, where a head pops out of the toilet singing a popular TikTok mashup of Timbaland’s “Give It to Me” and Biser King’s “Dom Dom Yes Yes.”
Subscribe for daily Tubefilter Top Stories
The next few videos were similarly simple, and set the tone for Skibidi Toilet as a lo-fi, surreal, dystopian world. But the human-headed toilets weren’t this world’s only inhabitants, and it wasn’t long before Gerasimov started introducing more lore. As the toilets tore through cities, spreading chaos, people with security cameras and TVs for heads surged onscreen, becoming the franchise’s protagonists. In later episodes, their battles would escalate to all-out war, with kaiju-sized toilets beaten down by enormous camera-headed mechs.
The internet was captivated.
And so was Bonkers Toys.
The San Diego-based company was founded in 2015 by CEO Brian Bonnett and got into the YouTube space back in 2018, when it became the first producer of official Ryan’s World toys in partnership with the Kaji family and pocket.watch. It went on to work with creators like Moriah Elizabeth, FGTeeV, Aphmau, LankyBox, Addison Rae, and Ninja Kidz, and is always keeping an eye out for YouTube-based IPs it thinks could dominate big-box toy shelves.
The moment Skibidi Toilet crossed its radar, it knew Gerasimov’s idea had the juice.
“We saw it, and we were like, ‘This is right up our alley,’” Dan Meyer, Bonkers’ Head of Brands, tells Tubefilter. “It has all these elements that are very ‘toy-etic,’ elements of a great action figure toyline. It has battling, good character development, things that are unexpected. Massive fanbase, massive viewership. All the ingredients. We said, ‘Let’s go after this.’”
By that time, Gerasimov had partnered with Adam Goodman‘s digital production company Invisible Narratives, of which Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles director Michael Bay is the Chief Creative Officer.
Bonkers’ reputation with content creators got it in the door for a pitch, and it decided to take a different approach from the “traditional action figure play,” Meyer says, where a line of toys is usually one of five or six in a company’s portfolio. Instead, Bonkers said it would make Skibidi Toilet the sole focus of its summer 2024 production efforts.
Invisible Narratives and Gerasimov agreed, and Bonkers got to designing. For the first Skibidi line, it decided to tap the enduring popularity of blind boxes and came out with minifigure and plush mystery packs. Then there was the marquee item: the Mystery Surprise Toilet, which is a foot tall and comes preloaded to pop out one of the series’ head characters.
It was made to stand out in stores. “Imagine, a closed toilet on a toy shelf,” Meyer laughs. “And it does have a handle, so you push and it flushes.”
Opening up the toy’s tank will reveal bonus minifigures, stickers, and a collectible lanyard.
Meyer says the Mystery Toilet was Bonkers Toys’ #1 best-selling item for Black Friday 2024. It also became the #1 new release on Amazon in the Action Figure category following its launch in October. Separately, Walmart confirmed the Skibidi line was one of its top-selling toy brands from October through December.
Bonkers doesn’t release revenue figures, so we don’t know how much this endeavor is making for it and for Gerasimov, but Meyer does say Bonkers is the second fastest-growing toy company in the world, and that it’s “competing with all the big guys” like Hasbro and Mattel, with shelf placement in the aforementioned Walmart, Target, and more.
Based on Skibidi Toilet’s digital and toyline success so far, Bonkers and Invisible Narratives have big plans for the franchise’s future. Gerasimov (whose channel brings around 200 million views a month currently) is working with Invisible Narratives and Bay on upcoming Skibidi Toilet episodes, as well as a potential TV series and film, both with Bay’s involvement. Bonkers, meanwhile, has 15 more Skibidi SKUs debuting over the course of 2025, and is also involved in the franchise’s creative direction.
“It’s awesome because from a toy company standpoint, we are co-creating that world with Michael [Bay], Adam [Goodman], and Alexey [Gerasimov],” Meyer says. “We can think of things that would be really good toys, and they can build it into the content in a way that’s organic to the story.”
This practice, he says, puts it ahead of competing toy companies. “Most toy companies, if you were going to create a toy based on a movie, you’d have to make it based off the established image and the details sent over to you. There’s so much ahead for Skibidi, it’s really blazing a trail in content and toy development.”
Skibidi fan creators get in on the action
Another area where he sees Bonkers being ahead is grassroots marketing on YouTube. As with any popular IP, Skibidi Toilet has seen a rise in knockoff channels that make their own videos in the hallmark Skibidi style, using the same audiovisual assets. While there could be an argument that some of these videos are legally protected as transformative works, Invisible Narratives has registered copyrights for a number of Skibidi Toilet’s characters and components, so could file DMCA claims and get YouTube to take down these fan creators’ channels.
Instead, it and Bonkers formed The Alliance.
Named after the camera- and TV-headed force that battles the toilet-heads, The Alliance is a network of YouTube creators who are allowed to post Skibidi Toilet videos without getting copyright claimed.
“There are dozens and dozens of channels making Skibidi Toilet content, and these channels, you’d be confused whether they were actually official Skibidi or not,” Meyer says. “We reach out to them and instead of issuing a C&D, we say, ‘Hey, you keep doing that, join us, we’ll call you guys The Alliance.’”
These channels together—around 40 so far—generate over 1.5 billion views per month.
“And what’s cool,” Meyer says, “is they’re all making animated ads of our toys and putting it on their channels. It’s totally disruptive to how anyone has ever marketed toys.”
You can see one of those ads at the 4:20 marker in this video from DOM Studio, which has over 10 million subscribers:
Ultimately, Meyer says, the Skibidi Toilet universe is emblematic of where Bonkers thinks the toy industry is heading with Gen Alpha.
“Kids these days, fans these days, care about legacy brands like Star Wars a little bit,” he says. “But what’s ballooning, skyrocketing, are these creator brands.”
