Rachel Accurso might be this era’s Mister Rogers, if he had been on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. Toy companies and publishers all want a piece of the action.
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 marketed a series of Ms Rachel toys, including a plush version of Rachel herself, which have 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 was 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 licence this year, according to the data analytics company Circana, with a collection that includes a “surprise learning box” and wooden blocks.
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. Accurso 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 fuelled by YouTube, rather than PBS or Nickelodeon, and enhanced by her presence on TikTok and Instagram, where her handle is @MsRachelForLittles, and where nearly eight 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. (It was a bit jarring to see her in a navy patterned sweater and jeans, no pink headband or overalls in sight.) “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.”
A billion views on YouTube
Rachel and Aron met at a church in New York – she’s from Maine, he’s from Colorado – and after getting married and becoming parents, she came up with the idea for their YouTube series soon after their son turned 1 and they learned that he had a speech delay.
Rachel Accurso searched unsuccessfully for slow-paced videos that were focused on language development to supplement their son’s speech pathology services. So she decided to fill the void with videos of her own. She sang and acted along with songs like Open, Shut Them and Barney’s I Love You, offering a virtual version of music classes. (Accurso said Thomas, who said his first word at 2 years, 8 months, is now a 6-year-old chatterbox.)
The couple’s first YouTube video, Bubble, Bubble Pop! Fun circle time song for kids!, posted February 13, 2019, got hundreds of views – it has now been streamed 9.5 million times – and started a following for 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. 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 Aron perform their own surprisingly catchy original songs and classics, often appearing with illustrations of animals or buses, bringing to mind Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. They also intersperse real footage of children and animals in the videos, especially with songs like Old MacDonald Had a Farm.
@msrachelforlittles How many can your baby do? #babiesoftiktok #baby #msrachel #toddlers
♬ original sound - Ms Rachel
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”.
And the show has travelled well beyond the couple’s home. They recently posted videos with Sesame Street star puppets Elmo and Abby Cadabby as part of a collaboration pitched by Sesame Workshop, and Rachel Accurso has performed with pop star John Legend, who posted their video to Instagram, saying her work “meant so much” to his children. The Make-A-Wish Foundation said six critically ill children had met Accurso through their programme since early 2023, the first year the organisation began to field any requests for her participation.
Rachel has managed to break through a seemingly endless pool of shows and characters vying for children’s attention in an era of great anxiety around youth screen time. Guidance from the American Academy of Paediatricians says that children under 18 months should be exposed to screens only through video-chatting and that 18- to 24-month-olds should be limited to educational programming viewed with a caregiver. The academy recommends that 2- to 5-year-olds be limited to an hour of non-educational programming daily.
Those restrictions collide with the realities of a generation of working parents who are under increased pressure to be hands-on when they’re with their children. For frazzled parents who might feel guilty about offering screens to their children, Ms Rachel’s focus on speech and education makes it feel like a safe option, and one that offers them ideas on how to talk and play with their little ones. It’s also something of an oasis on YouTube, which is replete with the television equivalent of junk food for toddlers, but which has also become one of the most popular streaming services on US televisions, as Americans increasingly watch the platform in their living rooms, rather than on phones and laptops.
Jennifer Nader, a 31-year-old mother from outside Boston, said that when her 19-month-old daughter, Cici, was born, she and her husband wanted her to avoid screens until she was 2. “But you know how it is – life ends up happening,” she said. “I was working from home, my husband was working from home, and we looked into YouTube.”
Nader was hesitant about much of what she saw until she came upon Ms Rachel. “It’s her singing voice, the fact she’s a teacher and she’s a natural talent,” Nader said when asked about her appeal. She said she also liked the diversity on the show, as the couple’s videos include actors from a range of backgrounds, including some who are Black or non-binary.
It’s now the only show that Cici watches. Nader and her husband speak Portuguese at home, and they credit the show for the dozens of English words that Cici has learned. Cici has also embraced the doll of Ms Rachel, which Nader was able to snag after signing up for a presale waiting list. (The couple have, she added, come across two Brazilian imitations of Ms Rachel, but Cici, who dressed as Ms Rachel for Halloween, has ignored them.)
Nader also follows Rachel Accurso on TikTok, where she talks about paid family leave, jokes about the Netflix show Bridgerton, and shares prayers for children in the Gaza Strip and Ukraine. (The mere mention of Gaza prompted some bullying this year of Ms Rachel, who posted about it in tears, prompting comments from parents like: “We ride at dawn for Ms Rachel.”)
“I always joke to my husband that YouTube Ms. Rachel is for kids but TikTok Ms. Rachel is for moms,” Nader said.
That voice is no accident
I’ve seen the allure of Ms Rachel firsthand. I started putting the show on for my toddler daughter this year so she wouldn’t wriggle while I cut her nails on Saturday mornings. She was enraptured, giggling and talking to the screen upon hearing questions like, “Can you say Dada?” Quickly, she started begging for “manicures” every weekend. Ms Rachel has a similar effect on other tots – TikTok and Instagram are rife with footage of children chatting with Ms Rachel on their televisions and, more recently, receiving the plush version of her with glee.
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 Accurso 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. 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. (Comedians have, on occasion, parodied the distinct voice and gestures on TikTok and Instagram, deploying Accurso’s mannerisms to offer, say, margarita-making instructions.)
The couple say they’re still getting used to frequent recognition by young children and their parents.
“It’s a great experience because really sweet people come up and say thanks for the show and it almost feels like we’re in a TV neighbourhood because they’ll say: ‘Hi, Ms Rachel. Hi, Mr Aron,’” Rachel Accurso said. Though she said that she once tried to say hello to a couple of children who were streaming her on their devices and that they didn’t even look up.
From YouTube to toy shelves
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.
Jenny Radesky, a co-author of the American Academy of Paediatricians’ screen-time guidelines and a developmental behavioural paediatrician, said YouTube could be something of a Wild West for children’s media. She leads a lab at the University of Michigan Medical School that evaluates children’s media and scores it in areas like educational content, using a scale of zero to two, with two representing the highest quality.
“We are getting more and more questions from parents about what good content looks like on YouTube because I think it’s pretty hard to tell,” Radesky said. “It all looks cute – primary letters and numbers and colours – but there’s decades of research from child development and learning sciences on how digital media needs to be designed in order for younger kids to learn from it.”
Examples of zeros on her lab’s rating scale include gimmicky YouTube videos about toys or movie trailers, while cartoons like CoComelon and the show Blippi tend to score ones because they are often simplistic and “could go deeper,” she said.
Ms Rachel videos typically score twos, with episodes of Sesame Street and Daniel Tiger, which deploy tactics like repetition and pauses so that kids can fill in the blanks from home. They also communicate concepts, like the sound of the letter A, to children in multiple ways, she said.
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 Mister Rogers and ‘Sesame Street’ and thinking about how committed he was toward making something beneficial for children with the medium”.
But the move 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.”
The hunt for Ms Rachel
When Henderson decided to track Rachel Accurso down, she wasn’t sure where to begin – so she got crafty about it.
She knew the show was filmed in New York, so she joined every Facebook mum group she could find in the city. She posted a screenshot of Ms Rachel on Instagram to see if anyone in her network might know her. She reached out to friends with Broadway connections after learning about Aron Accurso’s work. When Henderson finally scored a coffee date with Rachel Accurso – ultimately arranged through the couple’s agents at Creative Artists Agency – she scrambled to get a last-minute flight to make the meeting happen.
“I pictured having coffee with her mum to mum, one on one, and I just thought if I could get to her in person, we could really connect,” said Henderson, who previously led marketing for BuzzFeed.
Once the two began working together, the Ms Rachel line helped establish a new group for early learning toys at Spin Master, led by Henderson, which involves more than 30 employees. The company declined to share the details of its agreement with the Accursos, but typically, a licensing agreement like this one would require it to make the couple an upfront payment and offer a minimum guarantee on royalties from product sales.
Spin Master, which also sells Paw Patrol toys and Hatchimals, a line of furry stuffed creatures that hatch from eggs, told investors in October that the demand for Ms Rachel toys was “absolutely crazy” and that more merchandise was to come in 2025.
The toys themselves are analogue (“We don’t want kids watching TV all day,” Rachel Accurso said) and include a farm-themed puzzle, building blocks, a “tummy time” mat and, of course, the Ms Rachel doll.
All of the toys cost less than US$40 ($70), which was essential to Rachel Accurso, who said she grew up modestly and was once teased in junior high for wearing Walmart sneakers to gym class. She and Aron Accurso recently made a “play-along” episode featuring one of their toys. But they also provided free, printable paper cutouts on the Ms Rachel website, for viewers to play along for free.
And if you’re wondering whether it’s strange for the couple to know that a doll of Rachel Accurso is one of the hottest tickets of the holiday season, it is. “It was surreal giving notes on the doll,” Aron Accurso said. “I made sure that the doll had dimples and that they represented Rachel’s beautiful smile.”
Rachel Accurso added, “I joke that if it was a literal doll of me, it would be a mum with a bun and a cup of coffee”.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Sapna Maheshwari
Photographs by: Amy Lombard
©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES
