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Isaac Larian CEO MGA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Larian

(Persian: اسحاق لاریان ‎, born March 28, 1954) is an Iranian-born American billionaire businessman, and the chief executive officer (CEO) of MGA Entertainment, the world's largest privately-owned toy company.

How L.O.L. Dolls Became the Dopamine Hit of a Generation - Meet the man behind the $5 billion toy juggernaut.

Larian was also worried that Bratz had fallen out of popularity. The crop-top and platform shoe-wearing dolls were huge in the early aughts but had left the spotlight due to changing consumer tastes, as well as a particularly bruising report from the American Psychological Association that accused Bratz of sexualizing young girls.

Larian needed a win, and that night, he decided to browse YouTube and explore product-reveal videos he’d heard his kids talk about.

“My children said, ‘Do you know about this iPhone unboxing?’” Larian said from M.G.A.E.’s headquarters one recent fall afternoon. “I go on YouTube and put in ‘Apple iPhone unboxing’ and, oh my God, they were right. I thought people were crazy, frankly, for doing that. Then I typed, ‘toy unboxing.’”

A lightbulb went off.

Larian went straight to his design team with direct orders: “I said, ‘We need to make the ultimate unboxing toy.’”

The M.G.A.E. creative team’s response, L.O.L. Surprise! dolls, are pint sized, candy colored and have impossibly huge eyes, which makes them look like something out of an acid trip. They come with stylish hairdos, as well as varying accessories, like a handbag, coffee cup or headband.

But the toy’s cuteness isn’t its only wow factor. L.O.L. Surprise! dolls come inside opaque packaging, so kids don’t know what they’re getting until the toy is fully unwrapped. Each accessory — which typically number seven to nine, but can go into the dozens — is also hidden in its own layer of packaging, making the unwrapping an experience. The dolls, which target the 4 to 14 age range, also have different functions like squirting water or secret skin designs that are — surprise! — revealed after being placed under water.

Larian’s late-night inspiration spawned a sensation — one of the most popular toys of the last decade. $4.4Billion.

“Kids today want surprises,” said Stephen Pasierb, chief executive of the Toy Industry Association, an American trade organization. “They live in a world where everything is online, they know what to expect anywhere they go, and so they crave the mystery of experimentation.”

Much to the chagrin of parents who are bewildered by the trend, many children today would rather watch YouTube kids unwrap products than play with toys of their own. The videos can be addictive because they have the potential to stimulate areas of the brain that cater to reward, noted Richard Freed, Ph.D., a child and adolescent psychologist and the author of “Wired Child: Reclaiming Childhood in a Digital Age.”

“The unboxing trend capitalizes on the anticipation humans have when they want something,” Dr. Freed said. “It’s not as much about the reward as it is the excitement of the reward that can trigger the dopamine.”

Jackie Breyer, the publisher of Adventure Media Group, which puts out several toy magazines, said L.O.L. Surprise! products have thrived precisely because they are YouTube bait.

This helped spread the word and let the toy get swallowed up and spit out by YouTube’s algorithm as well.

Not that M.G.A.E. has left marketing solely in the hands of influencers. The company launched a YouTube channel of its own when it debuted L.O.L. dolls in December 2016, and it’s amassed upward of 1 million subscribers (although some of its unboxing videos draw more than 6 million views). An unboxing experience on M.G.A.E.’s YouTube channel often includes brushing the dolls’ hair, petting them and other A.S.M.R.-heavy triggers that have become popular on social media.

L.O.L. Surprise!’s YouTube play is a perfect example of how toy companies today sidestep marketing boundaries that the Federal Communications Commission put on children’s television programming in the ’90s. Unboxing videos, which are often created or sponsored by toy brands, are frequently how children learn about products.

“My kids are practically raised on YouTube and so they knew about L.O.L. before I did,” said Joanna Cox, a mother of three living in Washington, D.C., whose 7-year-old daughter, Helen, owns almost 30 L.O.L. dolls. “My kids zone out for hours while I try to get stuff done, and then they say, ‘Hey, Mom or Dad, I want the toys that I watched.’”

“I’ve seen videos of adults who dress up as princesses and make content for kids, and I find that to be really creepy!” Kotler said. “I’d much rather have my kids watch children playing with L.O.L. dolls. That feels safer.”

Larian said he continues to scour YouTube to see what kids like, but also gets intel from his 2-year-old grandson, Lev. (Coincidentally, Lev isn’t allowed screen time. Jasmin Larian, founder of fashion label Cult Gaia who is Isaac’s daughter and Lev’s mother, said she’s opposed to screen time because she knows how “addictive” it can be.)

“There’s going to be new trends, but we are like a chameleon,” he said with a big grin. “We will change for them.”