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 The video has garnered nearly 50,000 views and is part of the
growing craze of 'unboxing' that is a centerpiece of a live
global Walt Disney event, starting on Wednesday evening in
Australia, to unveil new toys from its December movie "Star
Wars: The Force Awakens."
The goal? To drive up excitement ahead of "Force Friday" on
September 4. That is when new "Star Wars" toys and other
merchandise from companies such as Hasbro and Lego will be
released in stores and online around the world just after
midnight.
The Disney event, to be live-streamed online, is the most
high-profile embrace to date of unboxing, where people film
themselves opening and trying out new toys and gadgets.
"It really created the perfect opportunity to take the new
products to fans directly," said Josh Silverman, executive vice
president of global licensing at Disney Consumer Products.
For those unboxers who can draw audiences, it's big business.
Eighteen of the top 100 YouTube channels are devoted to toys and
toy unboxing and accounted for 8.1 billion views from January
through March, according to Tubefilter figures provided by
Disney.
Unboxing on YouTube goes beyond toys, with viewers drawn to
YouTubers showing off their 'hauls' in beauty, fashion and
technology. Some unboxers can earn millions of dollars from ads
that run ahead of their videos or in some cases from
manufacturers who pay them to feature their products.
For the newest line of "Star Wars" toys that will include
lightsabers, spaceships and characters from the upcoming "Force
Awakens" film, Disney recruited stars from Maker Studios, which
it acquired last year.
"Most of these creators started off as fans, and that's the
draw, it's fans making content for other fans," said Chris
Williams, chief audience officer at Maker Studios.
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 Disney is not paying the 14 unboxers, Williams said, but is
covering travel and expenses to take each of them to a location
and film them opening and playing with the new "Star Wars" toys.
Each user will be opening different toys.
"Disney has a certain business goal here and what any marketer
is trying to do is tap into a cultural vibe without seeming so
heavy-handed that it'll be a turn-off," said licensing expert
Martin Brochstein.
The live event kicks off in Australia with family video-bloggers
Bratayley, and hands over to unboxers across Asia, Europe, South
America and North America, ending in San Francisco on Thursday
morning with Pirillo.
"What makes unboxing work so well is that the person watching may
not have that experience," said 42-year-old Pirillo, who has 346,000
YouTube subscribers.
Pirillo's posts, often titled #GeekFather, draw a core fanbase of
families, he said, and created a community of "kidults," adults
indulging their inner child.
The key to engaging that audience, according to Pirillo, is his
emotional reactions when he unboxes content, and it's what
differentiates unboxers from reviewers.
"It's not that they trust someone who is unboxing as someone who is
objective," he said. "They probably trust them because they're not
objective, because they know how much that product means to them."
(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant and Andrew
Hay)
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