Ms. Rachel’s improbable journey From toddler whisperer to holiday toy story

About a year and a half ago, Laura Henderson, a toy company executive and 38-year-old mother in Toronto, was at the tail end of maternity leave with her second child. She was bleary-eyed and overwhelmed, as mothers juggling an infant and toddler tend to be, when she started scrolling TikTok and stumbled upon the children’s personality known as Ms. Rachel.

That name probably means nothing to you – unless you regularly spend time with a child under the age of 3, in which case you’re likely aware that she is essentially Taylor Swift for toddlers. Ms. Rachel is the star of a mega-viral YouTube channel created with her husband (known to viewers as “Mr. Aron”) who makes educational musical videos for the baby and toddler set, complete with bursts of animation and Broadway-worthy show tunes.

In the videos, dozens of which each top 100 million views, Ms. Rachel, whose real name is Rachel Accurso, cheerfully speaks to young viewers while wearing a signature outfit of denim overalls, a pink T-shirt and a knotted pink headband. Little ones go wild for her version of “Hop Little Bunnies” and for characters like a fluffy orange puppet named Herbie, voiced by her husband, Aron Accurso. She does a lot of peekaboo and dramatic wondering of “what’s in” boxes: “What’s in the box? What could it be? Will you take a look inside the box with me?”

Henderson quickly fell into a rabbit hole as she read enthusiastic online reviews of Ms. Rachel from parents and child development experts, many of whom cited the research that underpinned her teaching techniques, and decided she had to find the woman behind the character. Her goal: to work with her and her husband on a toy line for her company, Spin Master.

That idea has paid off in spectacular fashion. This holiday season, Spin Master is marketing a series of Ms. Rachel toys, including a plush version of Rachel herself, which has been programmed to sing and coo phrases just like she does on YouTube. Amazon and Target report that the toy has been flying off their virtual and physical shelves, and Walmart says it is the most successful presale for any toy line in company history. By the time the holidays are over, Ms. Rachel is expected to be the top new toy license this year, according to the data analytics company Circana.

The supercharged journey of toys from YouTube screens to retail sensation illustrates the seismic changes afoot in children’s media and how modern parents are navigating that world. Ms. Rachel joins a long line of entertainers who have been uniquely magnetic to young children over the decades, like Fred Rogers, Shari Lewis of “Lamb Chop’s Play-Along” and Steve from “Blue’s Clues.” But her rise has been fueled by YouTube, rather than PBS or Nickelodeon, and enhanced by her presence on TikTok and Instagram, where her handle is @MsRachelForLittles, and where nearly 8 million millennial and Generation Z parents connect to her.

The new line of toys, as well as a separate book deal with Random House (“Ms. Rachel and the Special Surprise” debuted as a No. 1 children’s picture book this fall), is the couple’s first real expansion beyond the digital world, where they have mainly made money from YouTube ads. It’s the start of what could be a sizable children’s media empire worth millions – a development that almost seems to have caught the couple by surprise.

“It wasn’t, as the young people say, on our bingo card to be creators together on a children’s show,” Rachel Accurso said in an interview with her husband at their New York City apartment. “We just did it to try and help little ones in the beginning, and we actually didn’t quite know YouTube had the reach it has.”

The couple’s first YouTube video, “Bubble, Bubble Pop! Fun circle time song for kids!,” posted Feb. 13, 2019, got hundreds of views – it has now been streamed 9.5 million times – and started a following for Ms. Rachel that has since grown exponentially. This year, their YouTube channel nearly tripled to more than 12 million subscribers. It’s not the biggest kid-oriented account – Blippi has 22 million, and CoComelon has 186 million – but YouTube says the channel had one of the platform’s highest watch times on televisions in the past year.

The videos, usually 60 to 90 minutes, are made up of small segments of dialogue and songs. Ms. Rachel often talks to viewers from a bedroom or a playground, waving, pointing and playing peekaboo. She praises viewers, as though they were responding to her – clapping with a big smile and saying, “Yay!” Pop-ups on the screen offer tips to parents, like “narrate your day like a sportscaster,” and share the expected ages for common milestones: waving hands at 11 months, blowing kisses at 13 months.

She and Mr. Aron perform their own surprisingly catchy original songs and classics, often appearing with illustrations of animals or buses.

One of those baby learning videos (“First Words, Songs and Nursery Rhymes for Babies”) has reached 1 billion views. Mary Ellen Coe, YouTube’s chief business officer, said that figure was typically reached only by music videos – first achieved by the 2012 K-pop classic “Gangnam Style” – putting her in what Coe called “rarefied company.”

The Accursos may not have anticipated their success, but they were practically built in a lab for it. Rachel Accurso, 41, holds master’s degrees in music education and early childhood development from New York University, and for several years taught music to students in preschool through second grade. Aron Accurso, 45, is a pianist and musical director who worked on Broadway shows like “Sister Act” and “Aladdin” for more than 15 years before leaving last year to work on the Ms. Rachel show full time. (Several of the couple’s Broadway friends regularly appear on the show, which has grown increasingly professional over the years as the Accursos added a half-dozen employees and several regular freelancers to their production staff.)

The doll of Ms. Rachel contains one of her signature attributes – an exaggerated singsongy baby voice. That lilting cadence, which might startle first-time viewers, does not come by accident. It is known as “parentese,” and it’s effective in helping children imitate sounds and words because their own voices are high-pitched from small vocal cords, said Erika Cardamone, a speech language pathologist who practices near Philadelphia. Rachel Accurso often deploys it with repetition, gestures and the camera zooming in on her mouth.

“She uses a lot of fantastic strategies that we use as speech therapists at that really early stage of zero to 2 years,” Cardamone said.

The aisles of big-box stores reflect how YouTube has changed the face of children’s media; they are filled with toys inspired by characters that can be found on that streaming service. There’s a line of Ryan’s World products inspired by Ryan Kaji, the child toy reviewer, and others featuring YouTube phenomena like Baby Shark, Blippi and even Skibidi Toilet, the curious and recently viral short-form series that’s popular with Gen Alpha, the generation born in the 2010s to mid-2020s.

“It’s a huge coup to go from YouTube to the toy shelf,” said Juli Lennett, a toy industry adviser at Circana. Shows for the youngest Americans were once the purview of television networks and often staffed by educational consultants and researchers. Platforms like YouTube, where anyone can make a video and beam it to the masses, have shaken up that model – sometimes to the peril of youngsters, as some entertainers vie for their attention and corresponding ad money using lowbrow tactics like loud noises and flashing lights, knockoffs of beloved children’s characters or toy unboxing videos.

Aron and Rachel Accurso said they believed strongly in the accessibility of YouTube, though they acknowledge that there are parents who are uncertain about using the platform, especially with young children.

Rachel Accurso pointed to the groundbreaking work that Fred Rogers did with children’s television, saying, “We’re so inspired by Mr. Rogers and ‘Sesame Street’ and thinking about how committed he was toward making something beneficial for children with the medium.”

But the foray into toys was a decision they weighed carefully.

“We wanted them to be really thoughtful and really high quality and affordable,” Rachel Accurso said. “We have the parents’ trust and we never want to take that lightly.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.