Ryan's World

Ryan's World

Child exploitation in YouTube channel form!

Country:	United States
Release Date:	March 17, 2015 - present
Network(s):	YouTube
Distributed by:	PocketWatch Sunlight Entertainment
Episodes:	2,631+

Ryan's World (formerly Ryan's ToysReview) is a YouTube channel starring Ryan Kaji (born October 2011). The channel was created on March 16, 2015, with the first video being published the next day. The series is currently owned by PocketWatch, who has since turned the channel into an entire brand and franchise, with its own toys, merchandise, and video games.

Why Ryan Should Get Out Of His World

Visual explanation of how poor innocent Ryan has been milked by corporate greed, in an attempt to exploit young viewers with low-quality content farms (screencap from the Pocket.Watch website)

The franchise as a whole is just a shallow and cynical cash grab aimed at misleading their fans with low-quality content, exploiting Ryan and his sisters' likenesses for a quick buck, and presenting the overall problem with child exploitation in media.
It is clear that the channels are just a gigantic milking device for Ryan's parents and their production team, as they seem to never go one day without uploading a video on at least one of the channels. This also proves that Ryan's World is likely the worst example of child exploitation in YouTube history.
- Pocket.Watch (the company that runs the channel) has since turned it into an entire brand and franchise, with Ryan having his own toys, merchandise, video games, etc.
- The franchise even has its own channel on Pluto TV and a streaming service known as Ryan & Friends+, which also has content from other kid-focused channels as well.
- They released their first video game titled Race with Ryan in 2019, which is a Mario Kart rip-off and actually being released for consoles instead of mobile devices, and despite having generally negative reviews, a successor, titled Ryan's Rescue Squad was released in 2022 anyway, in which it is a rip-off of every single good platformer ever made, particularly the Yoshi games with the "slime ball" mechanic.
- Prior to the release of Race with Ryan, they partnered with WildWorks to make Tag with Ryan, an endless runner mobile game that is just a reskin of the Animal Jam game Dash Tag.
- In 2019, they partnered with Nickelodeon to make Ryan's Mystery Playdate, which was yet another pathetic cash grab intended to promote Ryan's World once again and even becoming the lowest-rated Nick Jr. show, and the second lowest-rated Nickelodeon show of all time on IMDB. It recieved four seasons within barely two years, although it was thankfully cancelled in 2023.
- In 2020, they partnered with Macy's to make a giant Red Titan balloon for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. This balloon has been used annually in the parade ever since.
- They also released an Amazon Kids+ exclusive live-action/animation-hybrid special titled Super Spy Ryan the same year. The latter also got a mobile game based on it two years later, which is very late for a "tie-in" game, with the game itself just being a shallow and bland rip-off of both Brawl Stars and Piggy Hunt, in which the latter already died in popularity before the game was even released. However, the game was delisted from both Google Play and the Apple App Store on April 27, 2023, with the game's servers also being shut down, making the game impossible to play since then.
- And to make matters worse if Smosh: The Movie and AVGN: The Movie weren't enough, they are even making an actual live-action/animated hybrid feature film based on the channel set to release in August 2024^[1] called Ryan's World The Movie: Titan Universe Adventure. Keep in mind that while Ryan's World did start to noticeably decline over time due to non-stop milking, the announcement they made here made everything age even worse than it did before. In fact, even HobbyKids Adventures and Baby Shark's Big Show! aged better, since while they're bad, they at least kept most of their relevancy and at least tried to be decent.
- To be fair however, their are other YouTube channels out there like Ryan that do milk their channels with merchandise at best just for fame, profit, or for fun. The same cannot be said for Ryan's World however, because they ended up taking this to a much bigger extent to the point of making a feature-length movie dedicated to the channel, and making partnerships with many famous brands. Due to all of these reasons above, this proves that their constant cash-grabbing and milking of the Ryan's World franchise has hit full rock bottom for real this time. The film is also an example of the franchise trying to jump the shark. Did they really have to do this?!
The animation, which is usually done using Adobe Character Animator, looks stiff and limited, and while the software itself isn't bad, it's not suited for a YouTube channel that makes millions of dollars a year, and is another proof-point for the franchise's quantity-over-quality approach. However, since the animated characters are often used in videos, it's understandable why they would use a quicker and almost automatic approach here.
- Occasionally, there is Flash animation, and while it has more effort than Character Animator, it is arguably worse, as it's extremely choppy, lazy and often suffers from constant frame-rate drops. The infamous webisode "Astronaut Ryan Found an Alien Puppy in Space" is the worst offender.
Many unlikable characters who are terrible role-models for the franchise's target demographic, such as:
- Shion Kaji (Ryan's father), who is treated as a butt-monkey/punching bag who lacks personality, and even worse, he's one of the main characters of the channel.
- Combo Panda, who is a hypocritical jerk and easily the most unlikable and overrated character of all. Ironically, he is the most famous and overused character besides Ryan.
- Alpha Lexa is a mean popular girl, and a bit of a jerk, despite being quite tolerable compared to the other characters.
- Peck the Penguin being the Combo's sympathetic and nerdy punching bag, and sadly, he is one of the few likable Ryan's World characters despite still occasionally being treated as a punching bag.
- Gus the Gator is nothing but an idiot who has a serious addiction to candy although he's more tolerable than most of the other characters. He also has a horrible and unintentionally racist-sounding Indian-like accent.
- Big Gil the shark is generic and has no personality other than being a sporty teenage shark, though he's one of the more tolerable characters of the franchise.
- Moe the Monster is one of the worst offenders. He looks like a Yo Gabba Gabba! reject, lacks any character development, and speaks in some obnoxious gibberish language.
- Dark Titan is supposed to be an evil doppelgänger of Ryan, but seems to act more of a bully/jerk and has generic motives, such as trying to take over the world and generally making very harmless threats.
- Packrat, despite being somehow entertaining and likable, serves as an obvious Dr. Eggman clone, in terms of how he acts and is designed.
- Robo-Combo, also despite being underrated and having a bit of potential, is nothing but a robotic clone of Combo Panda.
The humor is very stale and poor, with many jokes just being snarky comments, rude insults or are just outright stupid and nonsensical. They also occasionally use toilet humor.
- In more recent videos, they tend to use the "vine boom" sound effect a lot, which is another cheap attempt at appealing to a modern audience. "Rescue Squad Animation" is the worst offender of this, particulary in this scene.
Some videos are just reuploads of older ones.
The channel uses a lot of product placement as well, mostly for Ryan-related merchandise.
Many of the videos are clickbait, with the worst offender being the video titled "No More Ryan's ToysReview", implying they were leaving YouTube for good, but it was only because the channel was being rebranded to Ryan's World. A lot of family channels use this tactic to get views.
- Recently, a few of their videos also claim to have Ryan as the main star as usual, but he has a relatively minor and pointless role, or, on some occaisions, completely absent. The video "Ryan and Mommy Play EXTREME Hide and Seek Challenge!", is an example of this.
The channel lacks any original ideas, with some of the videos literally just being copied from other YouTubers, such as the "24 Hours in a Swimming Pool" challenge which sounds like a poor attempt at trying to copy MrBeast. It is also clickbait as they were only in the pool for 10 minutes, with the video obviously being cut.
- They even steal thumbnails from other YouTube videos. For example, a video from the Combo Panda spin-off channel, titled "Battle for Bikini Bottom Part 2!" has a thumbnail that was actually stolen from another video by ProsafiaGaming. The only difference is that Combo Panda replaced Robo-Squidward in the stolen thumbnail. (original, stolen)
The original songs made by the family and their production team sound terrible, with repetitive lyrics and grating vocals, especially the older ones.
Most of the video titles have poor and inconsistent grammar, such as "Ryan Found Aliens Dog and Monsters in Space!" and "Ryan Learns and Explores Space from Gus!". They are also quite misleading, often by putting Ryan's name in the title, when he doesn't have a major appearance in the video.
Hypocrisy: Despite claiming to be family-friendly, and while that claim is mostly honest, there are some moments which suggest otherwise, such as Combo Panda actually twerking briefly in a Halloween music video. To make matters worse, Combo is only 10 years old, so this can be considered a child sexual offense.
The challenge videos are scripted and probably don't even count as actual "challenges", as Ryan wins most of them due to him obviously being the main character and mascot of the entire brand, giving nobody else the chance to win. It can also encourage poor sportsmanship in younger children.
Some of the videos have poor-sounding audio, such as "Learn Seven Continents of the World for Kids with Ryan's World", which sounds like it was recorded on a Nintendo DS/3DS, which is again, unacceptable for a channel like this.
Too many pointless spin-off channels, to the point where the franchise can be considered a content farm on YouTube.
- Kaji Family is a mediocre vlogging channel that was feels like it was made for the sake of exploiting Ryan's younger twin sisters (Emma and Kate).
- Gus the Gummy Gator is a cartoon series with cringeworthy voice acting and bad animation which, like the main channel, tries to be hip and cool to a modern audience, but fails. The channel was abandoned on December 30, 2023, presumably due to its declining popularity and attempts to jump the shark.
- Combo Panda, while better than the other channels and was actually decent for its first few years, is now a mediocre gaming series that features the titular character. It also has many pointless cutaway gags, that are even more lazy than that of modern Family Guy.
- VTubers, while it mainly focused on dual-gameplays from the franchise's characters, now has a huge focus on reuploading videos from the original Ryan's World channel, which consist of Ryan and usually his mom playing cheap mobile games. Can't they just make a gaming channel to do this?
- The Studio Space is arguably the worst offender, featuring random "actors" in terrible, unoriginal and "scripted" challenges, and appears to be a MrBeast clone.
- EK Doodles is another cartoon channel, and while it's quite decent, the series consists of extremely short episodes and lacks any dialogue in it.
As stated above, all the franchise's channels, toys, merchandise, video games, television shows, etc. are all just shallow and cynical cash grabs aimed at promoting the Ryan's World brand and franchise, exploiting Ryan, Emma, and Kate's likeness for quick bucks, and presenting the overall problem with child exploitation in media, and sadly, given how the videos still do quite decently in views, it does not seem like it will stop anytime soon much like Teen Titans Go!.
- Since 2022, the views on the channels' newer videos began to decline rapidly, with Ryan's World only containing a couple-hundred-thousand views per video at best, compared to previous years where the views often exceeded the millions.

Redeeming Qualities

Unlike various Elsagate channels, the channel is at least child-friendly, usually not showing any inappropriate content on any of its channels, and that's saying something.
As stated above, Peck the Penguin, Big Gil, Packrat, Robo-Combo, Ryan himself and occasionally others are tolerable characters.
Sometimes, the franchise makes well-animated content, such as the EK Doodles series, the Titan Universe film and the Super Spy Ryan special, the latter was animated by the Japan-based Shin-Ei Animation, the studio behind popular anime series like Doraemon, Ninja Hattori-kun, Crayon Shin-chan, Atashin'chi, Mysterious Joker, Teasing Master Takagi-san, and Pui Pui Molcar.
- In late-September 2023, Ryan's World teamed up with Toei Animation, known for creating anime such as One Piece, Dragon Ball Z and Digimon to create Elemon.
They do try different styles for certain videos such as claymation, adding voice filters to older videos, and educational segments.
Some webisodes aren't that bad.
Since late 2022, Ryan has been making fewer appearances on the channel, to the point where he isn't even mentioned in some videos. This proves that Ryan is slowly getting less interested in making videos, but having him appear less proves that his parents may actually care about his opinions and choices too.

Trivia

The only reason Ryan wanted to be on YouTube was because he saw other kids with their own channels on there. He may or may not regret saying this in the future.
Ryan's mother, Loann Kaji, was arrested in May 2003 for shoplifting, and she served 30 days of a 60-day jail sentence for her crimes.^[2]