The Cons of Unboxing

L.O.L. Surprise Dolls may have been the hot toy of the 2017 holiday season, but are they setting a bad precedent for our relationship to brands and products?

by EB May

As humans developed, the fear of the unknown—which aided our survival—has turned into the delight of surprise. Toy companies have been exploiting this curiosity for years, with inventions like surprise toys in cereal boxes and claw machines in arcades. As technology advances, companies will invent new ways to satisfy our primal curiosity and desire to know what's hidden inside something. Unboxing videos are the latest iteration of this phenomenon, amplified by technology. And L.O.L. Surprise Dolls—a toy with seven layers of wrapping designed specifically to be unwrapped on video—are taking it to the extreme. While L.O.L. Surprise Dolls were good for short term business they, like the unboxing trend they represent, set a dangerous precedent by eroding our relationship with the consumption of products, the signaling of potentially dramatic shifts in family dynamics, and the normalization of irresponsible environmental consequences.

L.O.L. Surprise Dolls satisfy customers through a powerful combination of unboxing and collecting, but they damage our relationship with products. A buyer of one is incentivized to complete the set, which is great for the business, but the dolls themselves are worthless and quickly forgotten. People are now buying products simply for the sake of opening them and recording the experience. And by recording the unboxing, this keeps the product hovering in the realm of the intangible. Philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s theories of simulacra, simulations, and hyperreality provide some deeper insight on our relationship to products and how they’re represented in unboxing videos. In the era of TV–and now, by extension, Youtube–Baudrillard regards simulacra as copies that depict things that either had no original, or no longer have an original version, and that simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time.1

“Filming the unboxing...keeps the product suspended in hyperreality because it's converted from one simulacrum (the marketing image) to another (the unboxing video). At no point does it become a mere inanimate object with a banal material purpose.”2 That is, until everyone has opened one. As one reviewer on Amazon summarizes: “Cute but excit[e]ment ends after ball is opened” and these sentiments are reflected in hundreds of additional reviews of the product.3 What does it say about us when we buy stuff just to open it? If we continue to put the emphasis on the unboxing, we are heavily frontloading our relationship with the product and the brand which doesn’t provide strong grounds for a lasting relationship.

L.O.L. Surprise Dolls and the unboxing video trend not only reacts to the desires of the audience, they also shape future behaviors. In many ways, unboxing videos are not dissimilar to TV commercials, but their availability on YouTube means they’re less regulated and more accessible to children. The New York Times wrote, “The videos’ ability to captivate children has led toy makers, retailers and other companies to provide sponsorships and free toys to some of the most popular unboxing practitioners, who in turn can make a lucrative living.”4 Companies like MGA, the creator of L.O.L., understood this and sent toys directly to children with the expectation that they would broadcast their unboxing.5 This influencer style of marketing has created a new genre of stage-mom: the YouTube family. And this is reshaping family dynamics, as unboxing star Melissa Hunter noticed: “It’s concerning to know that these kids are watching me and my daughter and their parents have no idea what they’re watching.”6 Not only are the tech-savvy children watching a lot of these videos at the expense of other more educational and engaging activities, those featured in the promotions are exposed in a way which is unprecedented. When kids present themselves online, it isn’t a stretch to think a less well-intentioned audience could be watching. Products like L.O.L. Surprise Dolls encourage dramatic shifts in family behavior and potentially endanger the welfare of children who are online.

Besides their psychological and cultural impact, L.O.L. Surprise Dolls and other toys that encourage unboxing, also have an outsized environmental impact. With each additional layer of packaging added to the product, more plastic packaging is created, only to be immediately thrown out. “You have all these toys ― they’re cheap, they’re made out of plastic, they break easily. Most of the time they end up in the trash,” said Steve Rho, CEO of sustainable toy company Big Future Toys. “...We’re actually harming their environment that they’re going to live in for the rest of their lives.”7 This is a bigger issue for the toy industry as a whole but as more products based on unboxing, like L.O.L., become successful they are going to set off more extreme and wasteful imitators. As unboxing videos become more mainstream, the name of the game becomes quantity over quality, compounding the environmental impact.

It’s human nature to love the surprise and delight of unwrapping something to see what is underneath. This past Christmas, Amazon UK was accused of “ruining the holiday” after customers received items without any packaging.8 Unboxing is a powerful way to connect to customers and L.O.L. Surprise Dolls turned that into great short term business results. But their success sets the precedent on a mass scale for how toy companies will market to children. With any new trend, there are positives and negatives. On the positive side, toys like L.O.L. Surprise Dolls have captured the hearts and minds of millions of consumers and brought families together. But, they have the potential to do long term damage, including eroding our relationship with the utility of products, encouraging a dramatic shift in family dynamics, and normalizing irresponsible environmental consequences. As brands continue to explore the relationship between technology and human desires, they have an obligation to consider the long-term impact and ethics of their decisions, even in the face of short term success.

 

References:

  1. Lamoreaux, Janelle. Simulacra. http://it.stlawu.edu/~global/glossary/simulacra.def.html

  2. Eror, Aleks. Making Sense of the Strange YouTube Unboxing Trend: Philosopher Jean Baudrillard can help us understand this odd online phenomenon. “https://www.vice.com/en_nz/article/pa3nzm/making-sense-of-the-strange-youtube-unboxing-trend”

  3. Amazon Reviews. LIMITED EDITION GLITTER SERIES Ball LOL Series 1 L. O. L.“https://www.amazon.com/LIMITED-GLITTER-Ball-LOL-L/dp/B076PKY1ZW/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_sims?ie=UTF8”

  4. Hof, Robert D. ‘Unboxing’ Videos a Gift to Marketers. “https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/07/business/media/unboxing-videos-a-gift-to-marketers.html?_r=0”

  5. CBS Sunday Morning. What is this year's hot new toy? “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9gBpmsOmS0”

  6. Basu, Tanya. Why Are We Obsessed With 'Unboxing' Videos? “http://mentalfloss.com/article/72336/why-are-we-obsessed-unboxing-videos”

  7. Goldberg, Eleanor. There’s A Huge Problem With Kids’ Toys That No One’s Talking About. “https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/your-kids-toys-are-killing-the-planet_us_58ffa383e4b0f5463a1a9472”

  8. Goodman, Rob. Amazon accused of ‘ruining Christmas’ after customers receive items without any packaging. “https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/4962113/amazon-accused-of-ruining-christmas-after-customers-receive-items-without-any-packaging/”