YouTube viewers never see the face of the woman who films herself opening Disney toys. Fingernails adorned with tiny gemstone designs flip box tops and tear open cellophane wrapping, while her accented voice thrills at discovering candy hearts in tin boxes, or little ponies deep inside nesting plastic eggs. She is DisneyCollectorBR, and she was the online-video platform’s top-earning star in 2014, taking home almost $5 million from her share of ad revenues, according to a January 20 Yahoo Finance article.
DisneyCollectorBR is an “unboxer”—part of a years-long phenomenon of people who record themselves opening product packaging and describing the contents, then post the videos in hopes of earning ad revenue. To gauge the extremes, search “underwater unboxing” to find a Carphone Warehouse video with three cameramen and the unboxer submerged in diving gear to unbox the Sony Xperia Z3—and note the 1.1 million views. DisneyCollectorBR’s “Play Doh Sparkle Princess,” video has been watched almost 178 million times, and her channel has a total of 3,481,507 subscribers and a whopping 4.7 billion views.
