“We have the octopus plush!” a hand-written sign taped to a Brooklyn corner store’s front door declared early last year, attempting to lure customers with the promise of a simple, yet charming — and in that moment, very hard-to-find — plush sea creature that collectors can flip inside out to reveal a different color and facial expression.
These plush from TeeTurtle had just joined a relatively new and somewhat elite club among toys: Those that went viral on the social media platform TikTok.
The Reversible Octopus Plushie is just one of many toys that has gained a massive audience on TikTok, which offers user-generated, short-form video content. The app was one of the fastest-growing social media platforms over the past two years, and it offers a direct pipeline to a key demographic for toy manufacturers. According to Statista data from last year, about 25% of U.S.-based TikTok users are between the ages of 10 and 19. And while searching the hashtag #toys on the app will bring up a diverse lineup of products, fidget toys, surprise reveals, and plush toys reign supreme — likely due to interest from the tween/teen audience and these products’ potential for creativity in short-form videos.
For the team at TeeTurtle, going viral practically overnight came as a shock. “When we first designed the original Reversible Octopus Plushie, our whole team was super excited about the concept. But you never know how the world will receive a product, and we definitely couldn’t have predicted the level of viral success we ultimately saw,” says TeeTurtle Founder and CEO Ramy Badie. Upon learning that the octopus had gone viral, he recalls that his initial reaction was screaming. “And then after that, panic, as we realized that we were about to sell out of all of our inventory in under 24 hours,” he says.
While some manufacturers like TeeTurtle didn’t anticipate their level of viral success, other companies have intentionally and strategically utilized TikTok to grow their brands. One notable example of this is ZURU and its 5 Surprise Mini Brands line.
Back in 2019, ZURU launched Mini Brands, a series of blind-packaged collectibles that offer miniature versions of popular foods and household items. In 2020, the company decided to put nearly all of its (miniature) eggs in the TikTok basket.
“No one in the toy industry was on it,” says ZURU Marketing Director Henry Gordon. “We saw the growth of the platform and then said, ‘Alright, what can we do? We need to embrace this. We’ve got a product that actually fits really well with this and we’ve got a chance to lead,’ so that was a decision we made and it worked out really well.”
For its TikTok strategy, ZURU started posting about 20 videos on the app each week and placed ads within the app to search for young content creators. Each week, the team evaluates which videos performed well and which did not, then adjust future videos and paid content strategy accordingly. And the results have been both direct and strong — 5 Surprise Mini Brands’ sales growth spiked 104% year-to-date by last November, with a record number of people subscribing to the Mini Brands TikTok page that month, too.
While going viral on TikTok is a marketing goal for many toy companies, it doesn’t come without its own challenges. To start, it can be difficult to keep up adequate supply to meet the sudden consumer demand for a viral toy, especially at a time when supply chain delays and shortages are impacting the entire industry. Along with that, these viral brands have to continue offering new content to maintain the demand and keep consumers engaged to avoid, as Gordon calls it, going stale. He says that the ZURU team is always thinking 18-24 months ahead for new Mini Brands products.
Another problem — especially among plush toys — is counterfeits that try to capitalize on viral toys’ popularity and subsequent scarcity. Jazwares’ line of Squishmallows plush is another toy with massive success on TikTok, and the company has an entire team dedicated to seeking out and managing counterfeits. TeeTurtle also faced both counterfeits and supply shortages for the octopus plush throughout the past year. “Our team has admittedly had their Reversible Octopus Plushies on the angry side more than a handful of times,” Badie says. “It’s easy to get wrapped up in the stressful parts, and we’re ultimately super grateful to be in a position to have to face challenges like this at all.”
Despite these challenges, TikTok offers a level of user creativity and engagement that hasn’t been possible on other social media apps, such as Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.
“It’s scrappy content. It’s not production-quality, shot by an agency and a production crew with a $100,000 camera. It’s shot by, in our case, a 21-year-old on their phone,” Gordon says. “Polished content doesn’t work on the platform. People don’t engage with it, they swipe past it.”
This means that TikTok content can be incredibly cost-effective to create, especially if brands embrace the user-generated content that truly drives engagement on the app. In the case of 5 Surprise Mini Brands, Gordon says that within a year, the brand’s official page was no longer the largest TikTok channel focused on the toy — a fan account had eclipsed them.
And this fan content is incredibly diverse and creative. The videos range from retail hunting adventures, unboxings, and sharing personal collections to more outside-the-box ideas: Some couples communicate their moods for the day with the Reversible Octopus Plushie, for example, and one influencer even proposed to their partner by hiding a ring inside a 5 Surprise Mini Brands capsule (a feat that ZURU helped coordinate).
Because the app is so fan-focused, nearly every company with a viral TikTok toy mentions the importance of engaging with and listening to consumers. Kimberly Barbosa, head of social and influencer marketing at Mattel — which has had significant success on TikTok with its Barbie Color Reveal collection — says the team was watching analytics in real time and knew right away that the Color Reveal dolls were doing well on the app, thanks to fans’ reveal videos. “It’s the fans’ imagination and creativity that bring any product to life,” Barbosa says. “It helped us understand the consumer demand to engage on TikTok and was the push to launch our Barbie TikTok channel. We wanted to continue to interact with our community.”
Gerhard Runken, senior vice president of brand and marketing at Jazwares, also emphasizes the crucial role that fans play in social media success. “When I hear people say they are going to create a viral video, I chuckle. You can create a video, and your fans are going to make it go viral,” Runken says. “Our job is to then take that to the next level.” He also notes the importance of allowing influencers to make content with their authentic voice to maintain the emotional connection that they have with their fans.
But perhaps the most important point of all when it comes to TikTok — one that both Runken and Badie highlight — is the randomness of it all. No matter how closely you follow trends, use the right hashtags, or leverage the power of influencers, it’s impossible to predict exactly what will resonate with TikTok users on any given day.
“There is no formulaic way to be successful,” Runken says. “If that were the case, we’d all be successfully retired! Let good creative do its job, and don’t cost out the ‘wow’ factor in product or marketing. Your item could be $1 or $100 — you just never know what’s going to take off.”
This article was originally published in the February 2022 edition of the Toy Book. Click here to read the full issue!
