At this year’s annual international children’s TV conference, Kidscreen Summit, the major takeaways were that the traditional children’s linear broadcast TV business was in serious decline and that the children’s viewing audience had shifted to online platforms, specifically YouTube, Tik Tok and Roblox.
Above all the doom and gloom being displayed by mainstream broadcasters, distributors & TV production companies, there was one on-line kids property in particular that kept being mentioned in sessions, and in the corridors, and at breakfast, lunch and dinner, until it there just was a great cacophony of noise all talking about it – and the property was called Skibidi Toilet.
Skibidi Toilet began as a series of YouTube videos, first launching in February 2023 – there are now 80 Skibidi videos on YouTube and has since expanded into toys and merchandise and most recently into a feature film that is in full development and being produced by “Transformers” director Michael Bay.
According to Michael Bay’s PR machine the Skibidi Toilet movie will be the next big movie cinematic universe rivalling the current Minecraft movie and licensing phenomenon and given the buzz at Kidscreen Summit, I would not bet against this being at least, in part, true.
Skibidi Toilet is set in a dark animated sci-fi dystopian world where the Skibidi Toilets – mobile toilets with human heads popping out of their bowls – are at war with a humanoid looking race that have TVs, cameras or speakers for heads – and that’s about the sum of it.
The videos are all at once exceedingly comedic, absurd, violent and dark and have led in some cases to what’s being called the “Skibidi Toilet Syndrome” which is basically that some children may have developed a fear of using the toilet after repeatedly watching Skibidi videos.
Other than the characters doing battle with one another, there is not much more of an overarching plot and the Skibidi Toilet world uses a universal gibbering language allowing the videos to be watched equally in all countries around the world by its mainly under 12 year old Gen Alpha audience.
The Skibidi Toilet YouTube channel now has over 50 million subscribers and the videos have had 20 billion views in 18 months.
Skibidi Toilet content is all over Tik Tok and Roblox with similarly impressive viewing numbers and here’s the kicker, rather than trying to fight a losing battle against unauthorised fan created Skibidi Toilet content, the managers of the Skibidi Toilet property have embraced user created content and even support the top 100 user-generated creators by giving them semi-approved status and not discouraging them to upload their own Skibidi Toilet content by providing them with sanctioned artwork tools to make their unauthorised content of a higher standard.
This acceptance of user created content has massively excited and empowered the fan base and has also taken pressure off the Skibidi Toilet production team in having to meet the insatiable demand for new content that the audiences and algorithms of these online platforms demand.
So Skibidi Toilet is a perfect property for the now – its dark dystopian setting in a post-apocalyptic world sets the right mood for the young children faced with our environmentally challenged world, it’s funny, absurd, violent and scary all at the same time, has no difficult-to-follow overarching themes, its content is growing organically by fanbase content creation across multiple on-line platforms and it is about to get blown into a major cinematic event by a director who knows what he is doing.
Better get onboard if you haven’t already missed the boat – Skibidi Toilet rules.
Wide Eyes News from the Tube is written by a leading industry expert and is focused on providing a quick snapshot of the best opportunities in the television & animation market.
This article originally appeared in Edition 50 of The Bugg Report Magazine
