The Great Youtooz Expansion

by Finn, Grade 6

As of this article, the Youtooz saga is over, for now. My love for Youtooz should carry on through the summer, and next year I’ll come back to obses- I mean write more about these vinyl figures. Until then, let’s end in the present of the company, and the brands they’re reaching out to.

Arthur

Arthur is an aardvark from his show “Arthur”, which started airing on October 7, 1996. Due to his accessibility since it was on PBS, the show became a classic to kids at the time, since it taught them on how to deal with childhood issues. The design was based on an episode when D.W. (Arthur’s sister) broke an airplane model he had made, causing him to punch her in a moment of enragement. Fast forward to this year, and Youtooz had a special announcement up their sleeve, which was the Arthur figure. But, it got leaked on Twitter and Reddit the day before the announcement. It finally released on April 17, alongside animators SrPelo, CircleToonsHD, GingerPale, Berd, and TheSeaRabbit, and is still available today. Here’s the link: https://youtooz.com/products/arthur

Baby Nut

Remember the time when there was a “baby boom”? I don’t mean literary, I mean a boom in popularity on the Internet, thanks to Baby Yoda. And, throughout the explosion in popularity, there were 3 babies that stuck out the most. Baby Yoda, who everyone loved, the Ice Age baby, who everyone agreed to hate, and Baby Nut, who had mixed feelings of cuteness and “Get that wretched thing out of my sight.” The backstory behind Baby Nut is that before the Super Bowl, Planters released a commercial which features their iconic mascot, Mr. Peanut, sacrificing himself so others can go on. Then, during the Super Bowl, an ad played of everyone going to Mr. Peanut’s funeral, even other mascots like Mr. Clean and the Kool-Aid Man. But, out of nowhere, something grew from Mr. Peanut’s grave, and out came Baby Nut, Mr. Peanut reborn. This was obviously a PR stunt to get more attention for the company, and ever since it’s never really been that talked about. That was until Youtooz posted on Twitter a meme image that strangely resembled that baby, and speculation skyrocketed. At this point we definitely know it’s the baby since Youtooz released a silhouette of a figure that looked 100% like the body shape of Baby Nut. Here’s the silhouette: https://youtooz.com/products/mystery

John Wick, Snoopy, Mega Man, and LoL

Alongside Baby Nut and Arthur, other licensed characters have been teased through Youtooz’s Instagram stories. These include characters like John Wick, Snoopy, Mega Man, and characters from League of Legends, currently the biggest e-sport. These guys have also been even indirectly mentioned in Youtooz official statements. For example, when Youtooz made a statement after Twomad (A creator they partnered with to make a figure of him) trashed the company live on stream. To prove that they didn’t steal properties and YouTubers' identities, they mentioned how they had contracts with Sony (John Wick), Peanuts (Snoopy), Capcom (Mega Man), and 20 more companies, all to make figures legally.

Cuphead and Mugman

I almost forgot to mention this but the Youtooz community never saw this coming. Most members of the Youtooz community expected that whenever a character had a Funko Pop made (Another vinyl figure company), that character would never get a YouTooz. But, when we saw that Arthur was getting a Youtooz along with a Pop, things were looking up. The John Wick Youtooz also disproved that theory, since the Youtooz design looks a lot like the Pop design. So, as the weeks went on, we just kept speculating what branded figure will be revealed next. Then, one day, someone DMed Youtooz on Twitter for a leak, and Youtooz sent the top hat of a Mugman Youtooz. This caused everyone to go wild, since most people never saw this coming and also appreciate the game. After more digging, people found that the Mugman Youtooz was releasing in July, and assumed that a Cuphead figure would be released along with it. And ever since, hype has still been going.

The Emoji Collection

I almost forgot about this one again, so let me explain. One faithful day, Youtooz posted the original concept on Twitter for what we assumed at the time was a part of the Meme Collection, Vibe Check. After getting some criticism about it looking too creepy, they changed the design and yadda yadda yadda. If we fast forward a bit, they make another post, saying how they contacted a emoji company on Discord to make this figure happen. That then drove speculation through the roof and in the replies, they posted a guy sweating, but with yellow skin and an emoji with a cowboy hat and Youtooz eyes as the head. This confirmed all speculation and ever since, some more emoji figures have been revealed, like the Mind Blown emoji Youtooz.

Now usually, this is where I end the article, but there’s more, and it just happened a day ago.

The Austin Fallout

Yesterday, (As of writing it, it’s May 27th.) a limited figure of one of the founders of Youtooz named Austin released. This was just supposed to be a limited 500 figure drop, with all of the money going to charity, but everything went south really quick.When it dropped, the website didn’t load it for 95% of the people. And, after 14 seconds, the website loaded, but for people to find that it had already sold out. “How?” you may ask. One word: bots. The drop was instantly botted by purchaser bots, who instantly made Austin sell out. All of this was so that they could resell it, since even before the drop, people were buying it off Ebay for $300, and those resellers didn’t probably even get it. Instantly after that, everyone went on Discord and Reddit and just bombed the company, spamming things like “1 PER PERSON!” (Since the limit for a single person was 5) and “#RESTOCKAUSTIN”. Eventually, Austin logged on and told everyone to calm down and that a restock was coming, for the first time in Youtooz history. About 5 minutes later, another 500 Austins were posted on the site, and most people managed to get it, and it sold out at a reasonable time of about 1 minute and 30 seconds. But, there were the 10% of people that didn’t see the restock that were upset, so Austin also said that if you DM him on Twitter, he’ll make a manual order for you for the figure. And, after that, there was the calm after the storm, with everyone putting one “#GoodGuyAustin” and going on with their day.

In conclusion, purchase bots are mega dumb.