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How does a family-friendly online destination for kids come out of nowhere to become the most popular YouTube channel? A flood of content, it seems.

According to recent data from Tubefilter, Toys and Colors was the most viewed YouTube channel in November. The channel drew 2.7 billion monthly views, enough to triumph over music giant T-Series, the Indian record label that is the most watched and most subscribed YouTube channel of all time.

The channel partners with Pocket.watch, a kids and family studio founded by CEO Chris M. Williams and home to all manner of elementary-school phenomena, including “Ryan’s World” and “Love, Diana.” Toys and Colors is led by four kids — Alex, Emma, Jannie and Eric — with Williams likening format to that of classic show “The Mickey Mouse Club,” which utilized a rotating cast. “[Their content is] a combination of art and science,” he said. “They’ve mastered and perfected how an ensemble cast can create pretend play and learning content.”

How did Toys and Colors, which boasts a subscriber count of 48 million, rise over other popular children’s channels, such as Cocomelon, and renowned creators including MrBeast for November? The answer is a blend of content across a wide range of platforms.

Pocket.watch distributes Toys and Colors across streamers including Hulu and Roku. The company recently launched an additional subsidiary of the main channel, Toys and Colors Kaleidoscope City, along with an album for the spinoff with Universal Group. They’ve even teamed up with Cameo Kids that allows visitors to create a character with AI voice and AI animation techniques.

“We’re seeing all this growth is happening at the same time,” said Amanda Klecker, senior VP of marketing and franchise for Pocket.watch. “As their YouTube is growing, their brand is growing on all these other platforms.”

Klecker adds that the channel “blew up this fall,” as just six months ago in June, Toys and Colors hadn’t even breached Tubefilter’s top 100 most viewed YouTube channels. By September, the hub had risen to the 11th spot on the charts then cracked the top 10 in October to land third overall.

Could the channel’s newfound success be attributed to the holiday season? Williams doesn’t think so. “Seasonality affects audiences of kids and family content,” he said. “We’re seasonally in a zone that you find audiences typically go down ... the real surges come over the summer, when kids are out of school.”

Williams attributed the rapid growth to the channel’s ability to blend several content forms, including YouTube shorts, a more abbreviated content style similar to that of TikTok.

“A lot of that growth is coming from this successful chemistry of YouTube shorts with the regular longform videos that yielded this massive surge in audience,” he said. “They’ve been successful over the last 90 days in embracing shorts as a format,” aligning with their November viewership reign.

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