As holidays set in, children are up and about preparing their lists and ensuring they are right. But, there’s one item at the top of wish lists that has left parents scratching their heads: the Skibidi Toilet toy. This intentionally addictive and somehow whimsically global YouTube craze that has swept through kids — is the seasonal must-give gift of this year.
This “mystery toilet” is great for children: for $44.95, the package includes a kids’ toilet that has a spring-loaded, creepy head and sound effects to bring the flushing fun. Noticing a rising tide of Skibidi-mania, the U.S. company Bonkers Toys purchased the license right to turn these weird bathroom fighters into toys. Speaking with Business Insider, Bonkers Toys’ head of brands, Dan Meyer said:
“Right away we noticed that it was exploding”.
"When we're pitching it to [retailers], we had enough data to see that in middle schools and elementary schools, the term skibidi was already a thing," Meyer added.
Skibidi Toilet is now a toy!
Not surprisingly, this has presented a high level of demand, and Bonkers Toys is gearing up to offer more than just the Mystery Surprise Toilets. For now, the characters enlisted in the Skibidi Toilet brand are toys, action figures, mini-figures, and plushes (okay they do make a toilet look adorable). But next year, they’ll reportedly be rolling out more products, including what every little kid dreams of finding under the Christmas tree: a toilet bowl that is operated through a remote.
Adults might not understand these toys, but that is because they do not know the virtual world kids live in where memes rule everything around. Something like an inside joke coming to life or a tangible manifestation of something for the internet equivalent of a practical joke on a large scale.
What exactly is a Skibidi Toilet?
If you have not been counted among the millions of young fans who have viewed and rewaved the Skibidi Toilet episodes on YouTube, you might be baffled by this toilet coup. A series called “Skibidi Toilet” began in February 2023 on the YouTube channel DaFuq!?Boom! and the loose premise of human-headed toilets at war and humanoids with electronic devices for heads is somehow charmingly endearing.
Created by Alexey Gerasimov (a.k.a. Blugray), Skibidi Toilet was initially an experiment that combined humor, Internet culture, and, the rather esoteric, machinima – a sub-genre of video games where real-time computer graphics from one game are used to create an anime-style cartoon (in this case, Garry’s Mod). It’s trippy, comedic, and has earworm tunes with the first episode containing a song with a man’s head singing a skibidi song that you can’t get out of your head. Using such visual pranks as heads, music, and a scoop of memes, it turned into a viral phenomenon, and in the middle of 2024, the series got over 17 billion views.
These wild mini-episodes are as stereotypical to the Gen Alpha as are Saturday morning cartoons to older generations. But what about happiness so associated with fandom and pop culture observation that has no better representation than… a miniature Skibidi Toilet?
Is this generation drawn to the absurd?
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Many viewers find the fundamental idea of the Skibidi Toilet phenomenon to relate to a new form of entertainment for young people – memes with surreal humor. While creatives for Skibidi undoubtedly take inspiration from its quirky premise, the video responds to remix culture, sampling other viral videos such as “Dom Dom Yes Yes.”
Apparently, Skibidi Toilet has a storyline (who knew), which Redditors love to discuss with young fans now that seasons 2 and 3 have started. It is a show that children cannot only view but also participate in and build theories out of. Thanks to Bonkers Toys, the children can get their hands on the franchise and can literally hold the madness in their hands.
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