Ryan Kaji was only eight-years-old when he shocked the world in 2019 after Forbes announced that he was the highest-paid YouTuber in the world. According to reports, the young YouTube star earned as much as $26 million that year.
Kaji is the main star of the popular YouTube channel called “Ryan’s World,” together with his mother Loann, father Shion, and twin sisters named Kate and Emma. He has an early start to fame and fortune, but little is known about YouTube’s richest young man today.
Here are several facts about Ryan that you need to know.
#1: Ryan Started Very Young
Ryan’s YouTube channel, then called “Ryan’s ToysReview,” began when he was only three-years-old. It all started when they were watching YouTube videos of other kids doing toy reviews online. He asked his mother why he was not doing it as well. So his mother chose to quit her former job as a chemistry teacher in high school to concentrate full-time on her son’s YouTube channel.
The first-ever video uploaded to his channel showed young Ryan picking a Lego train set at the toy store. When asked why he chose that, his only reason is that he “like it.”
#2: Ryan Is Part Of The Billion View Club
One of Ryan’s videos titled “Huge Eggs Surprise Toys Challenge” belongs to the elusive list of Billion View Club. Since its posting four years ago, the video already generated 2,030.076.547 views as of December 2020. It is now considered one of the top 60 most-watched YouTube videos of all time.
#3: Ryan’s Subscribers Keep On Growing
During the last month of 2020, Ryan’s main YouTube channel has a total of 27.4 million subscribers. If you will count all the daily videos uploaded by Ryan and his family on the channel, they already generated over 30 billion views all in all. It belongs to the list of the top 100 Most Subscribed YouTube Channels in the world.
#4: Ryan Has An Equally Successful Merchandise Line
Ryan’s young fans can take home some of his favorite toys and games after his parents signed a deal with startup media company Pocket.watch to come up with different merchandise under his name. They released a runner game app titled “Tag with Ryan” in 2018, then followed it up with a straight-up video game called “Race With Ryan” in 2019.
Meanwhile, the Ryan’s World consumer products are also making tons of money. In an interview with Tubefilter, Pocket.watch CEO Chris Williams revealed that the brand is on its way to selling half a billion dollars before the end of the year. His toothpaste and toothbrush line is also selling like hotcakes.
#5: Ryan’s Family Changed Their Last Name
Ryan Kaji was actually a stage name coined by his parents. But the Vietnamese-Japanese family’s real surname was Guan. But they decided to replace their last name with Kaji for the family’s privacy.
Ryan’s World is expected to continue reaping success in YouTube for years to come. The Kaji’s also run other YouTube channels like Kaji Family, EK Doodles featuring Emma and Kate, the Spanish-language channel Ryan’s World Espanol, the Japanese channel called ライアンズ ・ワールド, among others.
