What makes a toy go viral

Again, we have not backed down. When you donate to independent nonprofits that make up the NPR network,

we hold the powerful to account together.

It's the kind of journalism democracy requires that we the public need to protect. Don't wait, join the community of people who power this work before the month is out. Head to plus.npr.org.

“Hi, quick update on one of our projects. Do you remember the planet money board game that we've been designing well?”

It is now in some stores, and it is filled with your suggestions. We will have an episode about all of this in a few weeks, but in the meantime, if you see it, send us a note. We would love to know where you spotted it, and you can send those to planet money at npr.org. And if you did buy it, why not leave us a rating or review. Okay, full updates in a few weeks, but here's today's episode.

This is Planet Money from NPR. 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. Yeah, and have a lot. Well, oh yeah. This is Juliana, due 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. It's like kind of like rubber would just like gel in it. Each one has a little puckered 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 call 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 alerts 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.

Three. Something like this. One. You actually got the tube. No way. Oh, I really want one of those.

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

I'm Lila. I'm Juliana's mom, squishy supplier. Juju got her squishy supplier to take her to the store. And then we like turned down an aisle, and then she's like there was just like the bin stacked full of them. They bought a few. And then Juju came home, set up her camera on a table, and placed dumpling number one in front of them.

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. Okay, so I think I don't like pinker the purple one or like the galaxy. She pulls off the packaging.

And lifts the lid off of the steamer bag. Oh my god.

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

Yeah. What are the odds? It's like, I don't know, but it's like pretty rare. Pretty soon. Her friends all see her video.

Okay, so now this time. So what the pink? Then they see this dumpling in real life. Or the green. And they want to get one.

And then they make their own videos. And then we found a new shark. 'Cause villains of other people are making their own videos.

“That's how fully we get the orange blue.”

And the squishy dumplings. And videos of people opening the squishy dumplings goes viral. And people are lining up to buy them. Stores are rationing how many can be sold. There's a booming resale market.

And judges collection is still growing. What is that? I think she's gone another glitter one. Wait, while you're talking to me? Yeah, it's just opened one.

So, whoa. 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”

to you. It is also the result of a very specific set of savvy business strategies. Today I'm going to show a quest to squeeze out the business lessons from this viral sensation.

And why?

“How do you build the supply chain that's ready for viral success?”

And are you the person behind the squishy dumpling? I am. Yes. This week on sources and methods missiles cost money and the Pentagon is running low on both. One of the concerns for the Middle East, Qatar and Kuwait and other locations may be Saudi is are there enough patriot missiles to go around to protect their bases?

The state of the US arsenal this week on sources and methods the national security podcast from NPR. GLP ones are best known as weight loss drugs, but they may also help people cut back on alcohol, cigarettes and opioids. They seem to work for many types of addiction. Maybe these effects are much broader than we previously thought. Ideas about the brain, addiction and empathy.

That's on the Ted radio hour podcast, listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

First, we wanted to know.

Secondly, how big a deal are the squishy dumplings? Are squishies big right now? Yes. There. So, we called up Kristen 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. Squishies and fidgets.

“Anything you have to do with sensory, soothing, squishing, slime things that you play with with your hands.”

Squishies, slimey, fidget toys. Walk into a store and you'll see scented squishy fruits and vegetables. Jello cubes that smell like different flavors of jello, then there's the needle 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. Kristen says just since January this year, squishy toy sales have grown 279%. Why? Why are squishy, sensory, slimy things so big right now? 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 holidays season this year. To me, these plastic sacks of goo all look the same. But not to the squishy dumpling of a shunato is like juju.

We're not using her last name because she's a kid. The real ones on the bottom will have, it'll say, like, our mask. You can't really see, but it's like there. 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 Barber first started working there in the UK where he's from.

As you can tell from my accent, you are the person who made this happen. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely something that we can hang out on that we made this happen. Which is really cool. 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 will come back to. But in the beginning, it was just this 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 a 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. I would design a sticker book.

Uh-huh. Or it would be a pencil case with a new cool design on it. Maybe this mermaids or maybe this dinosaurs. 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 Supernanny. She'd give out rewards when kids were good. Well, that show was trending. So we put that trend on series that product. Zach created a reward sticker book.

And everybody wanted it just something so simple.

“Was it like, did you have to get the IP or anything?”

It was a show or you just. No, no, we didn't call it supernanny. We just called it a reward chart. Uh, tweak for their small company that mostly sells small inexpensive toys.

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. There's just called a pop ear.

“And this is a key part of how their company works.”

Because there is this place. This buzzing manufacturing city in China called Ibu. And in that city is this like endless bizarre for toy companies. There are thousands of sellers with what are called open market toys. 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 are throwing in the air or bouncy balls that they're trying to get your attention work. Oh my goodness, like a living commercial of people on the sides, just like applying new toys. Yeah. So through that market, a lot of these like knick knacks will call it for the purpose of this conversation.

That's where you're going to find them. That was where he found a popper. This one was a simple silicone square. And he was like, "Here me up. Something trendy with it.

Make it in the shape of a butterfly." And glittery. And this time he says they sold millions. I call it innovation with a small eye. Aha.

“It doesn't need to be the next big thing.”

It just needs to do something to turn the dial a little bit. I asked Zach. Is that how the squishy dumpling came about? Yeah. It is exactly what happened.

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

Basically, this item similar to the popper.

Like if you just sold it as it is, it's going to sell. And it's kind of cool. It's okay. This first version, the as is squishy dumpling made its debut in 2020. And it didn't flop, but it languished.

Loungeed on the shelves sold like a hundred thousand. 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 in a surprise.

Or he calls it mystery. We started to adjust our business. My long ago, how do we make it cool? How do we make it trendy? 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. 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. 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 with that matter. I mean, it's so 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. Why do you think that is? Because 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 what drums 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.

Even Tuju's mom Lila gets it. When she was a kid, the thing she absolutely had to have were these trading cards. I collected those garbage pale kids. Oh, you know, 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. Garbage pale 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 incorrectist version of them. There were cards like Smoody Sam, which was a nose picking Uncle Sam and broad mod, a very large doll surrounded by candy bar rappers. 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 brains rewards system. Like you're chasing a specific outcome.

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.

In one year, they more than doubled their sales. And then Zack 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 Zack says his squishy dumpling journey made clear.

He and his colleagues were like, what if we release different series of these dumplings? You'd still buy just one at a time, but the dumplings in each new series would run out eventually. 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. I know they came out with a green apple-scented one. And then what if we include one super special mystery dumpling in each series?

Yeah, so there's like a galaxy one where the like rare looks like this and everything. 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. And then there's like a holographic series. 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 foam. You don't want to miss out.

My mom says it definitely worked on her daughter. I'd get home from work and she would be here and say, can you take me to five below? And I like I haven't even taken my jacket off yet, you know.

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

Like not always like all like him and some because if they're like, no, I don't really want driving them. I'll just feel like, well, they have them just for right now. Like what if they're never here ever again? Well, she's talking. She actually looks at her mom with this hopeful smile. It's like, it's kind of easy.

It's reasonable for the first couple.

“But after a few different trips, I was like, you know, this is like five dollars 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. And yet I kind of found myself getting excited too. 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 it's all just stopping and check off your mom. They have any if they have any dumplings and 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. Yeah.

Zach agrees, not embarrassing because it's all by design. The thrill of the chase is, is exciting for people. It's a dopamine like people get bored.

“Like, you're going to do different things.”

So, you know, we're playing into the attention and sponge. And keeping the store shelves stocked with the exact right number of toys isn't just math. There's a lot of psychology involved. If you don't have stock 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.

This kind of artificial scarcity is not a move Zach invented. Now, model exists because of bany babies. They are the pioneers 100%. Yes, bany babies, those small stuffed animals. I was selling toys when bany babies came around. Kristen McLean, the consumer zoologist, was working at a toy store in Boston in the 90s

when people became obsessed with them. 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 bany babies in the store. People lined up for them.

And Kristen says this was the very beginning of people obsessively collecting limited drops. Limited editions, special releases, you know, time boxed. 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.

"Oh my god, there's like 500 million views.

As these people go in crazy over the dumplings. They love the unboxing experience, so 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."

He says, "So far in the first half of this year, they've sold ten 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. The most compelling global stories straight to your ears.

“That's what we do at State of the World from NPR.”

Developments in Ukraine, Iran, with Ebola, but also how British beavers are fighting the effects of climate change. So we said the beavers can do it probably fraction of the cost, certainly more sustainably. Listen to State of the World every weekday. On the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. When life gives you lemons, what do you get?

Negative utility. You think this is Darien? See you to get it from Planet Money, the home of economic nerdiness we revel in it. Well, you can not only listen to our show, but you can read us in our weekly newsletter that comes out every Friday morning. Sign up now at mpr.org/indicatornewsletter.

The NPR app cuts through the noise, bringing you local, national, and global coverage. No paywalls, no profits, no nonsense. Download it in your app store today.

“The thing Zax says he never really thought about before that day.”

He saw so many TikTokers on boxing. His dumplings was how much what people did with them mattered. It's the experience. It's not necessarily the dumpling itself. It's the reaction to the dumpling that everybody is hooked on.

Everybody wants a piece of that. 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 many. So I'll bought 10 of them. The idea that there is this massive marketing apparatus that they didn't even have to pay for. Zax 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, Zax would have to orchestrate a super nimble supply chain, which RMS had already cultivated. Zax 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. RMS was perpetually ready to ramp up or ramp down production. We work 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 already 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. 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?

“I think that what most toy companies would think is a smart thing to do is to get ahead of it.”

And so producing advance and have the sample ready and to have the stock ready. 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. But I just don't think like that. And that like when do I need to produce was 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. 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, Zack is not sitting on a whole season's worth of toys, just one week's worth.

It's like the fast-fashioned version of toys.

Essentially, he's trying to never be left holding the bag.

Retailers won't need to have stock because they won't use 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 wear a house 900,000." And I'm just like, "No, I'm not having the order." In the end, because the squishy dumpling is such a big success.

Zack says the major retailers are calling him up and asking to sell his toys anyway. They're adapting to his model.

Like hiring people whose job it is just to pay attention to what's going viral.

“There's a whole new department that you need to have.”

That's like, "What is breaking on TikTok today?" Was easier or harder to be a toy manufacturer before. 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.”

Our MS 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. It's been kind of dying down, but there's like some people who still post about it,

but 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 they'll be something else and then they'll be really easy to find. Are you still like going to get them regularly? Not as often. 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. 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 events 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 to show and even chooses 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 Peasley. It was edited by Mary Ann McCune.

It was back-checked by Sierra Juarez. It was engineered by Sina Lofrato. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. Thank you to Jess Zhang for lagging the squishy dumpling mania and Will and Wong for being our on the ground dumpling reporter. I'm Eric A Bears. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.

You've got a lot of ways to get news and a lot of podcasts in your feed that take a long time to get to the point. Here and now any time gets to the heart of the day's big story all in about 20 minutes every afternoon. Get smarter and expand your world fast. Listen to here and now any time on the NPR app or wherever you listen to podcasts. On NPR's wildcard podcast, country legend Shani Twain says she wants to live to be 200.

If I only think, oh well, I'm only going to live to be 80. Yeah. If that's my projection and I'm going to be rushing through it. I don't want to live like life with urgency. Watch or listen to that wildcard conversation on the NPR app.

Or on YouTube at NPR wildcard.