In just two months, Webs & Tiaras has become the third most popular channel on YouTube, even if it’s one of the strangest success stories yet on the service

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The latest YouTube craze is a channel where adults don Spider-Man and Elsa from Frozen outfits and ride giant ducks, grow Pinocchio noses and lick enormous lollies.

Webs & Tiaras’ first video was only published in March 2016 but the channel, which promises “compilations of your favourite superheroes and princesses in real life”, has already notched up 1.7bn video views.

In May, it was the third most-viewed YouTube channel in the world according to online-video industry website Tubefilter, based on stats from analytics company OpenSlate indicating Webs & Tiaras was watched 544.7m times that month.

The channel is seemingly aimed at children, who have become one of the biggest drivers of YouTube viewing over the last two years. Other characters featured include Batman and The Joker, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Captain America.

The videos have background music but no dialogue, which may be buoying their appeal to a global audience rather than just English-speaking children. According to its YouTube profile, Webs & Tiaras is based in Canada.

The channel’s rocketing stats have led to concern in some quarters that it is somehow gaming the system: for example, spending money on “view bots” to artificially inflate its viewing figures. There is currently no evidence to prove that is the case, however.

In May, YouTubers Ethan and Hila published their own video questioning Webs & Tiaras’ success, while tracing its roots back to another “toy monsters” channel on YouTube, which had been generating significantly less viewing.

More puzzling is the fact that there are several near-identical channels on YouTube, as outlined in this Reddit thread discussing the phenomenon. Toy Monster, The Superheroes Life and The Kids Club all have the same neon-heavy outfits and video formats.

YouTube is no stranger to peculiar new crazes, from ASMR to toy-unboxing – the latter genre accounted for 20 of the top 100 YouTube channels in March. You can now add the “toy monsters” genre to that list.