Page 5 - MidWeek Kauai - Dec 28, 2022

G
Story
Kajis Are Living Their Own Toy Story
FROM PAGE 4
“When we decided maybe we should go to Hawai‘i, we actually took Ryan with us here to check out the place and see if he likes it,” says Loann. “He ended up loving it. He loved hanging out at the beach. He was trying to surf, and I was like, ‘What do you think about moving here?’ He was like, ‘Oh, that means I can go to the beach all the time,’ so it just worked out.”
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“We always get the ques- tion of how Ryan balances his time,” notes Loann. “Since we moved to Hawai‘i, we only film 1-2 hours a week, and mainly on the weekends so he’s able to have a lot of time doing extracurricular activi- ties that he enjoys and hanging out with friends. That’s our No. 1 priority: education and making sure that he still has a childhood.
“There’s one video where we tried flashlights as studio lights,” remembers Shion. “We’re flashing the flashlights on Ryan’s face and only his face is lighting up.”
Currently, Ryan, Emma and Kate attend the same school. In his free time, Ryan swims, plays tennis, enjoys roller- blading and started going to the gym with his friends (yes, he’s growing up). He also has been taking “circus class” for the past couple of years, learn- ing juggling, card tricks and magic tricks.
challenges and more.
“It was about four months
“We film (on our iPhones)
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plush doll: Ryan’s World Red Titan.
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production company, Sunlight Entertainment.
Now, the Kajis have a team of over 35 employees work- ing at Sunlight Entertainment, which they formed a year af- ter launching their YouTube channel.
There also is the Ryan’s World brand side of the busi- ness, producing toys, video games, clothing and more, as well as collaborations, such as a toothpaste and tooth- brush with Colgate, cereal with Kellogg’s and sneakers
“We are working together with a company based in Ha- wai‘i,” he adds. “We’d love to help promote the culture and community and bring more awareness of how great Ha- wai‘i is.”
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Ryan in its 2022 Top
ing projects for next year that we cannot say in detail just yet but there are a lot of projects in connection with Hawai‘i,” shares Shion. “Now that we moved to Hawai‘i, we’d like to contribute to the commu- nity here, and there are many projects that we’re right now working on that has to do with Hawai‘i.
DECEMBER 28, 2022 KAUA‘I MIDWEEK 5
for them. It’s where their fam- ilies live and their company is headquartered. But they’re also enjoying life in paradise, creating new memories on and off the camera.
Rscripted it doesn’t take too long to make.”
ecently, Forbes listed
Creators Earnings at $27 million. In 2017, he be- came the youngest person to ever make a Forbes top earn- ers list with $11 million. And just two years before that was when Loann posted that very first video on YouTube of an adorable 3-year-old Ryan pick- ing out a toy at Target. Initially called Ryan ToysReview, the channel was renamed to Ry- an’s World and evolved from videos of Ryan opening toys to a mix of fun things like science experiments, music videos,
researching ways to improve video quality, but they didn’t have a budget back then. They used a green tablecloth against a wall for a green screen, and put a shower curtain over the table to make it white.
in Hawai‘i and send it to them and they edit,” reveals Shion. “That’s why we’re able to move here. We realized a lot of editors can just do it remote. There are a lot of new staff members we hired outside of Houston, some of them live in New York, California, Colora- do ... we were able to recruit a lot of good talent from all over the place.”
with Skechers.
“We have a lot of new excit-
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Fill in the blank cells using numbers 1 to 9. Each number can appear only once in each row, column, and 3x3 block. Use logic and process of elimination to solve the puzzle. The difficulty level ranges from Bronze (easiest) to Silver to Gold (hardest). Answers are on page 7
RATING: GOLD
Emma has jumped into kara- te, and together with Kate, they do swimming, gymnastics and piano lessons.
“A lot of our videos, he’s in the beginning part or it’s an an- imation or a compilation of his previous videos, so the cadence of us actually producing new content really is once a week, and because our videos aren’t
after that (first video) we felt, OK, this is really big, we have to get support,” recalls Shion, who worked as a structural en- gineer. “We were getting a lot of exposure around the world and a lot of kids just waiting for new videos ...
They also all serve as cre- ative directors for the family’s
“We found it fascinating because we didn’t have any equipment or any editing skills ... but somehow it captured their minds.”
Shion and Loann started
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