What makes a toy go viral

Squishy, slimy, fidgety toys are having a moment. But it’s more than just an anxiety-soothing, social-media fueled trend – these toys are reshaping how toys get made. Today on the show, we have the story of the once-humble squishy dumpling and what it teaches us about how to make a viral hit and how to manufacture it, without getting left holding the bag. Hear it all firsthand from the creator of this trendy toy. Read: Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life https://lnk.to/i3AukBdD Our weekly longform Planet Money newsletter https://n.pr/3zrFvUB Our weekly Indicator round-up newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/indicator Follow: Instagram https://n.pr/3FqLuws TikTok https://n.pr/3sGZdrq YouTube https://lnk.to/iCVDaW3C Facebook https://n.pr/3h92GwS Support public media by joining NPR+ at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. You’ll get perks for over 25 NPR podcasts, including bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Planet Money. This episode of Planet Money was produced by Emma Peaslee. It was edited by Marianne McCune. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. It was engineered by Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer. Music: NPR Source Audio - "Melty Heart," "Summer Escape," and "Twilight Sparkle" See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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  The other day, I got on the line with someone who, at least at her middle school, is kind of a big deal. I hear that you are like legendary among squishy dumpling collectors.

• 1:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, I have a lot. Well, I got one.

• 1:09Speaker 03

  This is Juliana, Juju to her friends. And she is counting all her squishy dumplings, which she has assembled on her kitchen table. Squishy dumplings are these rubbery, stretchy, squishy dumpling toys, just the right size to squeeze in your hand.

• 1:26Speaker 04

  It's like, kind of like rubber with just like gel in it.

• 1:29Speaker 03

  Each one has a little pucker top, like a real dumpling, plus a smiley face, and comes in its own plastic steamer basket. These little guys are some of the latest toys to go viral. And Juju is one of the experts we called to help us understand exactly how a little squishy blob has sold so many millions over the past few months. She told us, for her, the allure started a few months ago when she was swiping her way through TikToks and she saw someone pulling a squishy dumpling out of its package for the first time.

• 2:02Speaker 05

  Three, two, one. You actually got the teal one. No way.

• 2:07Speaker 04

  I was like, oh, I really want one of those.

• 2:09Speaker 05

  It matches my nails.

• 2:10Speaker 03

  The exciting part wasn't just a toy. It was that the TikTokers didn't know what color it would be or what special qualities it would have.

• 2:19Speaker 04

  The part of like unboxing and not knowing what you get is like pretty fun.

• 2:23Speaker 03

  She had to have one. But Juju is 13 years old. So actually, she had to convince her parents that she had to have one.

• 2:31Speaker 06

  I'm Lila. I'm Juliana's mom, squishy supplier.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  Juju got her squishy supplier to take her to the store.

• 2:40Speaker 04

  And then we like turned down an aisle. And then she's like, there was just like the bin stacked full of them.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  They bought a few. And then Juju came home, set up her camera on a table, and placed dumpling number one in front of her, still in its little beige steamer basket with a lattice top, just like the bamboo ones, but plastic. She looked into the camera and started recording her own TikTok.

• 3:04Speaker 04

  OK, so I think I'd want like the pink or the purple one, or like the galaxy.

• 3:09Speaker 03

  She pulls off the packaging, closes her eyes,

• 3:15Speaker 03

  and lifts the lid off of the steamer basket.

• 3:17Speaker 05

  Oh, my God.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  So the very first one you ever bought happened to be like the super rare blue glitter.

• 3:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:27Speaker 03

  What are the odds?

• 3:28Speaker 04

  It's like, I don't know, but it's like pretty rare.

• 3:31Speaker 03

  Pretty soon, her friends all see her video.

• 3:34Speaker 04

  OK, so now this time, I want the pink.

• 3:37Speaker 03

  Then they see this dumpling in real life.

• 3:39Speaker 04

  Or the like green.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  And they want to get one. And then they make their own videos. And then

• 3:46Speaker 05

  We found the new shark dumpling.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  Cazillions of other people are making their own videos.

• 3:50Speaker 07

  Let's hopefully we get the orange, blue.

• 3:52Speaker 03

  And the squishy dumpling. And videos of people opening the squishy dumplings goes viral. And people are lining up to buy them. Get in line at or five below. Stores are rationing how many can be sold. There is a booming resale market.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  And Juju's collection is still growing.

• 4:14Speaker 03

  What is that?

• 4:15Speaker 04

  I think I just got another glitter one.

• 4:18Speaker 03

  Wait, while you're talking to me?

• 4:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, I just opened one. So, whoa.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Erica Barris. The squishy dumpling is clearly speaking to something in the American psyche. But its viral success is not just the market meeting our weird desire to squeeze something cute. It is also the result of a very specific set of savvy business strategies. Today on the show, a quest to squeeze out the business lessons from this viral sensation. Where does a trend like this come from and why? How do you build a supply chain that's ready for viral success? And are you the person behind the squishy dumpling? I am, yes.

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• 6:20Speaker 03

  First, we wanted to know exactly how big a deal are these squishy dumplings? Are squishies big right now?

• 6:28Speaker 05

  Yes, they are.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  So we called up Kristin McLean, who calls herself a consumer zoologist. She's actually a toy industry analyst. And she says 2026 has been a great year for toys. And squishy toys are one of the fastest growing categories.

• 6:43Speaker 05

  Squishies and fidgets. Anything having to do with sensory, soothing, squishing, slime, things that you play with, with your hands.

• 6:51Speaker 03

  Squishy, slimy, fidget toys.

• 6:54Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  Walk into a store and you'll see scented, squishy fruits and vegetables, Jell-O cubes that smell like different flavors of Jell-O. Then there's the Neato Squishes. Those are incredibly popular and near impossible to get right now. There's also a squishy stick of butter and little squishy animals. Just think stress balls, but cuter. Kristin says just since January this year, squishy toy sales have grown 279%. Why? Why are squishy, sensory, slimy things so big right now?

• 7:30Speaker 05

  I think that it has to do with the fact that people, not just kids, adults too, are looking for things that make them feel hopeful, playful, joyful. Also, things that calm them down, things that address their anxiety. Right now, it doesn't show any signs of slowing down. So I'm very bullish on this, certainly going into the holiday season this year.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  To me, these plastic sacks of goo all look the same, but not to these squishy dumpling aficionados like Juju. We're not using her last name because she's a kid.

• 8:04Speaker 04

  The real ones on the bottom will have, it'll say like RMS. You can't really see, but it's like there.

• 8:10Speaker 03

  Oh, I totally see it. Yeah, the squishy dumplings people seem most excited about are made by RMS. It stands for Really Magical Stuff. And right now, it's one of these up and coming toy companies that is kind of shaking up the way big toy makers like Mattel or Hasbro do business. But that wasn't the case back when Zach Barbour first started working there in the UK, where he's from.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  As you can tell from my accent.

• 8:36Speaker 03

  You are the person who made this happen. That's pretty cool.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's definitely something that we can hang a hat on, that we made this happen, which is really cool.

• 8:44Speaker 03

  How did Zach make that happen? What are the secrets to viral success? Zach told me part of it was luck. Another part of it was a game-changing shift in the way he gets toys to market, that we'll come back to. But in the beginning, it was just a series of smart business lessons he picked up along the way. The first, to make a hit toy, you don't have to be some kind of wild inventor or creative genius. You just have to be someone who can figure out how to tweak an existing toy in a way that makes it trendy. Zach has seen this trick work many times over his 20 years at his toy company. He actually started out driving the forklift back in the UK. Then he designed packaging for RMS toys.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  I would design a sticker book.

• 9:27Speaker 03

  Uh-huh.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Or it would be a pencil case with a new cool design on. And maybe there's mermaids and maybe there's dinosaurs.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  But then he moved into toy development. And the first toy he developed was a simple tweak that seized on a trend. It was 2008, and there was this super popular show in the UK called Super nanny. She'd give out rewards when kids were good.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Well, that show was trending, so we put that trend onto that product.

• 9:54Speaker 03

  Zach created a reward sticker book.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  And everybody wanted it, just something so simple.

• 10:00Speaker 03

  Was it like, did you have to get the IP or anything from the show? Or you just?

• 10:04Speaker 02

  No, we didn't call it Super nanny. We just called it a reward chart.

• 10:07Speaker 03

  Oh. Tweak, for their small company that mostly sells small, inexpensive toys, it was a hit. Zach says they sold like 10,000 of these sticker books. And the next time Zach remembers that tweak model really working for them was a decade later. In 2018, after RMS had expanded to the US, they came out with their own tweak on a pop-it. You know the pop-it, that silicone tray thing with bumps that when you're fidgety, you can push them in and they make a little pop sound like this. And then you can push them back from the other side. Very viral a few years ago. Now, RMS didn't invent the pop-it. Theirs is called a pop-er.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  And this is a key part of how their company works. Because there is this place, this buzzing manufacturing city in China called Yiwu.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  And in that city is this like endless bazaar for toy companies. There are thousands of sellers with what are called open market toys.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  So imagine walking down that road. You've got tables left and right, and you've got all the street vendors trying to sell you these light toys that they're throwing in the air or bouncy balls that they're trying to get your attention with.

• 11:25Speaker 03

  Oh, my goodness, like a living commercial of people on the sides, just like plying you with toys.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, so through that market, a lot of these like knickknacks, we'll call it for the purpose of this conversation. That's where you're going to find them.

• 11:37Speaker 03

  That was where he found a popper. This one was a simple silicone square, and he was like, hear me out. What if we do something trendy with it? Make it in the shape of a butterfly and glittery. And this time, he says, they sold millions.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  I call it innovation with a small i.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  It doesn't need to be the next big thing. It just needs to do, do something to turn the dial a little bit.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  I asked Zach, is that how the squishy dumpling came about?

• 12:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. It's exactly what happened.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  One of his colleagues caught sight of it in those long aisles in Iwo.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Basically, this item, similar to the popper, like if you just sold it as is, it's going to sell and it's kind of cool and it's okay.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  This first version, the as is squishy dumpling, made its debut in 2020. And it didn't flop, but it languished, lounged on the shelves, sold like 100,000. Then, a few years into squishy dumplings life, in 2023, Zach picked up on a huge trend. He was looking around the toy landscape and he was like, duh, people are really into surprises. Or as he calls it, mystery.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  We started to adjust our business more along the, well, how do we make it cool? How do we make it trendy?

• 12:51Speaker 03

  By this time, Zach was CEO of RMS in the US. And this is the second big lesson. He says he learned about how to create a viral toy. How do you make it trendy? You add surprise.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  This one, we just thought it comes in this really cool basket. Why tell them what color? And that's when we turned it to a mystery.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, they put a little suspense into it. And for many people, like 13 year old Juju, the suspense is key. Like if I just gave you a pile of them unboxed, would that matter?

• 13:24Speaker 04

  I mean, like it's, I'd still be happy because like it's like a bunch of toys, but like I feel like the opening part and like not knowing what you get is like part of the fun.

• 13:32Speaker 03

  Why do you think that is?

• 13:34Speaker 04

  Cause like, I don't know, I feel like if they just like displayed which ones it were, it wouldn't be as fun because then you just get to like pick which ones you want. And then it'd be kind of boring, just like getting the same thing or, you know? Like when you open it and you don't know what it is, there's like a chance that you might get something else.

• 13:50Speaker 03

  Even Juju's mom, Lila, gets it. When she was a kid, the things she absolutely had to have were these trading cards.

• 13:58Speaker 06

  I collected those garbage pail kids.

• 14:00Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:01Speaker 06

  You know, the cards? Yeah, I wasn't into sports, so I didn't collect baseball cards. But I feel like it's that same kind of thing where you don't know what you're going to get. And you keep getting the same ordinary ones, but you're looking for that one rare card.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  Garbage pail kids were a phenomenon back in the 1980s, a spoof on another viral toy, the cabbage patch kid. But like the grossest and yes, politically incorrectest version of them. There were cards like Snooty Sam, which was a nose picking Uncle Sam and Broad Mod, a very large doll surrounded by candy bar wrappers. And those are just the ones I feel quasi comfortable sharing on the air. The psychology behind really all trading cards is you keep buying them at a really inexpensive price with the hope that you'll get the one you really want. And these toys share a lot with casino slot machines. They're all playing with the brain's reward system. Like you're chasing a specific outcome.

• 15:03Speaker 03

  You're so close, so close. In psychology, it's called variable ratio reinforcement, where you don't know when the reward is coming and that uncertainty keeps you going. For Zach's squishy dumpling, the mystery propelled things forward. In one year, they more than doubled their sales. And then Zach was like, you know what else people like? This may sound counterintuitive, but they like it when things are hard to get. People are driven by scarcity. That is the third lesson Zach says his squishy dumpling journey made clear. He and his colleagues were like, what if we release different series of these dumplings?

• 15:43Speaker 03

  You'd still buy just one at a time, but the dumplings in each new series would run out eventually.

• 15:49Speaker 04

  And I know they came out with like a shark series where they're like all blue. And then the like rare one is kind of like clear with a little shark inside the gel.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  Oh, fun.

• 15:59Speaker 04

  And I know they came out with a green apple scented one.

• 16:02Speaker 03

  And then what if we include one super special mystery dumpling in each series?

• 16:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, so there's like a galaxy one where the like rare looks like this and everything.

• 16:13Speaker 03

  So you don't just get six of these things and move on with your life. You have to keep buying dumplings until you get all six in the series. And if you want the super special ones, well, just keep going, keep buying.

• 16:26Speaker 04

  And then there's like a holographic series.

• 16:30Speaker 03

  They're like sneaker drops. So if you're into squishy dumplings and there's a limited drop at say the budget store five below, you don't want to have FOMO. You don't want to miss out. Juju's mom says it definitely worked on her daughter.

• 16:43Speaker 06

  I'd get home from work and she would be here and say, can you take me to five below? And I like, I hadn't even taken my jacket off yet, you know?

• 16:52Speaker 03

  Are your parents always willing to drive you to get them?

• 16:55Speaker 04

  Like, not always, but like I'll like convince them because if they're like, no, I don't really want to drive them. I'll just be like, well, they have them just for right now. Like, what if they're never here ever again?

• 17:06Speaker 03

  While she's talking, she actually looks at her mom with this hopeful smile.

• 17:10Speaker 04

  Like, it's kind of easy.

• 17:13Speaker 06

  It's reasonable for the first couple, but after a few different trips, I was like, you know, this is like $5 every time. And then it starts turning into a financial discussion. Like, you know, the, the craze is only because they've hooked you on this cheap piece of plastic.

• 17:32Speaker 03

  And yet?

• 17:33Speaker 06

  I kind of found myself getting excited too. I, I fell into it because she would be, you know, looking for these special rare ones. So there was one day I was driving home from work and I passed a five below. So I was like, I'll just stop in and check and see.

• 17:50Speaker 03

  Oh, your good mom.

• 17:51Speaker 06

  If they have any, if they have any dumplings in stock. That's probably my most embarrassing moment, the one day that I stopped at three or four on my way home from work. I should be embarrassed to say that.

• 18:05Speaker 03

  Zach agrees, not embarrassing, because it's all by design.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  The thrill of the chase is, is exciting for people. It's a dopamine hit. Like people get bored, like you got to do different things. So, you know, we're playing into the attention span.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  And keeping the store shelves stocked with the exact right number of toys isn't just math. There's a lot of psychology involved.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  If you don't have stocked shelves, people get bored because they can't find it. So they get bored if they can't find it. They get bored if they can't find it. What's that happy medium ground? The happy medium ground is special release drops constantly. Now, once that rainbow sherbet's gone, it's gone. That's it. Sorry.

• 18:49Speaker 03

  This kind of artificial scarcity is not a move Zach invented.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  That model exists because of Beanie Babies. They are the pioneers 100%.

• 18:59Speaker 03

  Yes, Beanie Babies, those small stuffed animals.

• 19:03Speaker 05

  I was selling toys when Beanie Babies came around.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  Kristen McLean, the consumer zoologist, was working at a toy store in Boston in the 90s when people became obsessed with them.

• 19:14Speaker 05

  We would get these boxes into the store and they would have a seal on them that said, do not open until this date. And that was the drop date for those Beanie Babies in the store.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  And people lined up for them. And Kristen says this was the very beginning of people obsessively collecting limited drops.

• 19:30Speaker 05

  Limited editions, special releases, you know, time boxed.

• 19:36Speaker 03

  Zach was reaping the benefits of all these lessons with his squishy dumplings. And then came a moment, kind of the moment, where the squishy dumpling took on a life of its own. He and his colleagues were in the office and they went online.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  We're like, oh my God, there's like 500 million views of these people going crazy over the dumplings. They love the unboxing experience or finding the glitter one. And it went nuts. It was regular people that were promoting our product without being asked to because they loved it.

• 20:14Speaker 03

  So while last year's Zach says they've sold millions of squishy dumplings, he says so far in the first half of this year, they've sold 10 times that in the tens of millions. It's one thing to go viral, it's another to keep pace with it. Like, how do you make tens of millions more squishy dumplings exactly? And only when customers want them? That's after the break.

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• 22:11Speaker 03

  The thing Zach says he never really thought about before that day, he saw so many TikTokers unboxing his dumplings, was how much what people did with them mattered.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  It's the experience. It's not necessarily the dumpling itself. It's the reaction to the dumpling that everybody is hooked on.

• 22:32Speaker 05

  I'm so excited to open these. They also had the

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Everybody wants a piece of that.

• 22:35Speaker 00

  Let's attempt to create a lesbian pride flag inspired custom dumpling. Yes, you are probably the first in your bloodline to have heard that sentence, but I have childlike wonder and grown folks money, so I bought 10 of them.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  The idea that there is this massive marketing apparatus that they didn't even have to pay for, Zach says, that was a huge stroke of luck. What was not luck was how well prepared to go viral his business was. To keep up with social media, Zach would have to orchestrate a super nimble supply chain, which RMS had already cultivated. Zach had, for years, struggled to get his toys into the major retail stores in the US. So instead, he focused on stores that sell inexpensive impulse toys, like Five Below. And he built a lot of his business around trends, which meant short orders and fast production. So his supply chain already looked different from a lot of other companies.

• 23:31Speaker 03

  RMS was perpetually ready to ramp up or ramp down production.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  We work out our production schedules by week. So let's just say Factory A can produce 100,000 in a week. That means that we will officially give that factory a nod the week before we're supposed to go into production. They'll have it all ready to go, but we don't have to produce millions at a time. We're producing based on the orders that need to go out, you know, relatively close to the ship dates.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  So on Monday, and you call and you're like, press the button. It's squishy dumpling time. Does every toy company operate like that?

• 24:09Speaker 02

  I think that what most toy companies would think is the smart thing to do is to get ahead of it and to produce in advance and have the samples ready and to have the stock ready.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  They present prototypes of new toys to retailers more than a year before they're in stores. The retailers put in their orders and then lots of toys get manufactured and they're kept in storage.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  But I just don't think like that. I think that like, when do I need to produce? It's the very last moment to limit my liability for everybody. There's a lot of risk with it. There is, but it works for us.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  In the US, RMS does not warehouse anything. They have zero domestic stock. So it's delivered straight from the factory where it's made, direct to the retailers. And if there's a downtrend, Zach is not sitting on a whole season's worth of toys, just one week's worth. It's like the fast fashion version of toys. Essentially, he's trying to never be left holding the bag.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  Retailers want you to have stock because they want you to have the liability, not the retailer. So for example, Walmart will say, we'll order a million, but we're only taking 100,000. You need to warehouse 900,000. And I'm just like, no, I'd rather not have the order.

• 25:23Speaker 03

  In the end, because the squishy dumpling is such a big success, Zach says the major retailers are calling him up and asking to sell his toys anyway. They're adapting to his model. And Kristin says big companies are also trying to become more nimble, like hiring people whose job it is just to pay attention to what's going viral.

• 25:44Speaker 05

  There's a whole new department that you need to have that's like, what is breaking on TikTok today?

• 25:51Speaker 03

  Was it easier or harder to be a toy manufacturer before?

• 25:54Speaker 05

  I think it's a little bit more difficult now to figure out how to get to your customer. Mainstream toy brands that have been around for a really long time are suddenly finding that the tried and true rules of their business have shifted radically. And they are worried about little companies coming up and taking their shelf space. They're worried about, where is my customer? Which platform are they using? Who are they listening to? There are no rules that seem to stay the same for even a year right now.

• 26:25Speaker 03

  RMS doesn't actually have someone officially working as a social media watcher with an eye on squishy dumpling traffic, but we at Planet Money do.

• 26:35Speaker 04

  It's been kind of dying down, but there's like some people who still post about it, but like not that much. So I'm guessing like sooner or later, it's going to be like, they're going to die down and then there'll be something else and then they'll be like really easy to find.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  Are you still like going to get them regularly?

• 26:51Speaker 04

  Not as often.

• 26:53Speaker 03

  Her latest obsession, also thanks to TikTok, she's gotten super into making sourdough bread. You know, the squish of it all, which is great for her family, but maybe not so much for the toy industry.

• 27:20Speaker 03

  Listeners, a lot of you have been reaching out to tell us you missed out on something we offered, like NPR shop discounts or live event announcements or an episode that you have been waiting for. Well, you know how to keep up with all of our announcements? Hit the follow button. It doesn't cost you anything and it helps the show and even juices the algorithms to show us off to future listeners. We think. We're not actually totally sure how the algorithms work. This episode of Planet Money was produced by Emma Peaslee. It was edited by Mary Ann McCune. It was fact checked by Sierra Juárez. It was engineered by Sina Lofredo. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. Thank you to Jess Jiang for flagging the squishy dumpling mania

• 28:03Speaker 03

  and Wayland Wong for being our on the ground dumpling reporter. I'm Erica Barris. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.

• 28:21Speaker 07

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