COCOMELON THE FUTURE OF HOLLYWOOD STARTED AS A YOUTUBE SHOW FOR TODDLERS

HOW ANIMATED NURSERY RHYMES THAT A COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR MADE FOR HIS KIDS GREW INTO A $3 BILLION BEHEMOTH THAT EVEN DISNEY CAN'T IGNORE.

- BY NATALIE JARVEY

ON MARCH 21, 2017, the most famous toddler in the world was born.

As if by immaculate conception, JJ—as he would later be named—appeared as a fully formed child with a cherubic face, big brown eyes, one top tooth, and a swoop of yellow hair like freshly squeezed toothpaste on an 11-year-old YouTube channel called ABCkidTV. In his first rudimentary computer-generated video, JJ giggles and dances unsteadily next to a girl with spiky red pigtails as a jaunty tune leads them through a stand-and-stretch routine.

Over the next several months, as JJ and his family began to appear in more videos, ABCkidTV’s monthly views accelerated. In December of the following year, the channel—rebranded as CoComelon, a combination of the words “coconut” and “watermelon”—hit 2 billion total YouTube views.

By 2020, JJ had two teeth and had made his way to Netflix. Now he greets his young viewers on his series, CoComelon Lane, by singing, “It’s a great day on CoComelon Lane, and it’s so nice to meet ya.” Not that there are ever bad days in JJ’s world, where the sky is always a perfect cheery blue, all the CG edges are soft and round, the parents are perpetually patient, and problems are easily solved in a tight seven minutes.

It will not surprise anyone living with a child under the age of 7 to hear that CoComelon shows drove more than 45 billion minutes of viewing on Netflix in 2024, more than any other children’s property on the streamer, including Gabby’s Dollhouse. Or that JJ has fans in more than 190 countries who watch him in dozens of languages on 100 different streaming services. On YouTube, videos starring JJ, his friends Cody and Nina, and their parents are featured on more than a dozen channels with a combined 400 million subscribers and average 4 billion monthly views.