Mark Rober, Toys and Colors prepare for summer of fun with kid-friendly YouTube collab

The kids of Toys and Colors have invited a notable grown-up to their latest playdate. Mark Rober appeared alongside youngsters Kaden and Andrea to promote the CrunchLabs brand through a series of collabs with one of YouTube’s most popular kid-friendly hubs.

Videos from the collabs are showing on both the Toys and Colors channel — which is partnered with children’s media company pocket.watch — and Rober’s official CrunchLabs hub. Rober hosted a “Science Day” for his co-stars at CrunchLabs HQ. After pitting Kaden and Andrea against one another in a gauntlet of scientific challenges, Rober had them explore an “extreme laser maze” he and his team built.

The collab unites two of the biggest entertainment destinations in the world. Both Toys and Colors and Rober’s primary hub rank among the 40 most-subscribed YouTube channels; the former channel counts 76.5 million subscribers, while Rober is right behind at 69.2 million.

Toys and Colors and CrunchLabs are both areas of emphasis for their respective partners. Culver City-based pocket.watch, which has also built franchises out of kid-friendly IP like Ryan’s World and LankyBox, is looking to capitalize on Toys and Colors’ surging viewership. Throughout 2024, the upbeat children’s hub regularly ranked as the most-watched U.S.-based YouTube channel, according to our Tubefilter 

In October 2024 alone, Toys and Colors picked up more than 3.4 billion monthly views. Emboldened by those big numbers, pocket.watch has set up several high-profile collabs, first with Sesame Street and now with Rober.

As for CrunchLabs, Rober’s line of subscription-based “build boxes,” content-based promotion is currently the name of the game. A cameo in Roblox helped Rober introduce creative tinkerers to his scientific product line, and the Toys and Colors team-up encourages even more kids to ask their parents for CrunchLabs subscriptions. Currently, a primary focus of Rober’s YouTube output is the promotion of Camp CrunchLabs, a summertime initiative that features weekly challenges.

CrunchLabs recently telegraphed its plan to invest in more content when it hired Scott Lewers as its first Chief Content Officer. Lewers, a longtime Rober associate who worked with the creator on his Discovery series, Revengineers, will aim to make CrunchLabs’ build boxes look exciting on screen. Based on Kaden and Andrea’s excited reactions to the experiments they witnessed, the CrunchLabs channel is moving in the desired direction.