The wildly popular Toy Freaks YouTube channel featuring a single dad and his two daughters has been deleted, amid a broader crackdown on disturbing children's content on the video streaming platform.
Toy Freaks, founded two years ago by landscaper Greg Chism of Granite City, Illinois, had 8.53million subscribers and was among the 100 most-viewed YouTube channels before it was shutdown on Friday.
Though it's unclear what exact policy the channel violated, the videos showed the girls in unusual situations that often involved gross-out food play and simulated vomiting. The channel invented the 'bad baby' genre, and some videos showed the girls pretending to urinate on each other or fishing pacifiers out of the toilet.
Another series of videos showed the younger daughter Annabelle wiggling her loose teeth out while shrieking and spitting blood.
'He is profiting off of his children's pain and suffering,' one indignant Reddituser wrote about the channel last year. 'It's barf inducing and no mentally stable person or child should ever have to watch it.'
A YouTube spokesperson said in a statement: 'It's not always clear that the uploader of the content intends to break our rules, but we may still remove their videos to help protect viewers, uploaders and children. We've terminated the Toy Freaks channel for violation of our policies.
Toy Freaks, founded two years ago by landscaper Greg Chism (left) of Granite City, Illinois, had 8.53million subscribers before the Friday shut-down
Chism's channel, which features his daughters Annabelle and Victoria, appears to have been caught up in a broader purge targeting a wave of strange and inappropriate kids videos
Toy Freaks appears to have started out innocently enough, and evolved toward creepier fare through Chism's expert optimization and tweaking for views
RELATED ARTICLES
- Previous
- 1
- Next
- Serial killer who slayed SEVEN people in a van he dubbed the... Orthodox Jews 'attacked traffic warden and dragged him from...
Share this article
Share
'We take child safety extremely seriously and have clear policies against child endangerment. We recently tightened the enforcement of these policies to tackle content featuring minors where we receive signals that cause concern,' the statement said.
Chism's channel, which features his daughters Annabelle and Victoria, appears to have been caught up in a broader purge targeting a wave of strange and inappropriate videos aimed at young YouTube Viewers.
Videos in the broader genre, documented by blogger James Bridlelast month, seem to intentionally weave disturbing or violent imagery into content that appears child-appropriate.
For example, many of the videos in the genre feature children's characters such as Spiderman and Elsa and involve injections, urination and other bizarre content.
The Toy Freaks channel, however, appears to have started out innocently enough, and evolved toward creepier fare through Chism's expert optimization and tweaking for views.
The Toy Freaks channel often focused on strange foods and gross-out eating scenes
Chism is seen with his two daughters Annabelle and Victoria in one of the Toy Freaks videos
Chism, who was a landscaper before finding fame and fortune through viral videos, got his start on YouTube with a 'fitness and lawn care' channel called Geek To Freak.
He was once called 'one of the most influential YouTubers in the landscaping and lawn care community'.
Toy Freaks began as a side project in early 2015, Chism once said in an interview with fellow landscaping YouTuber Stanley Genadek.
'It was just family videos, I take videos with my kids and post them up there, just like home stuff playing in the living room, playing with toys and stuff,' Chism explained of Toy Freaks origins.
His daughters were aged four and six at the time, in early 2015.
'I started to see a pattern, where some videos would get more views than others. So I focused on that, I analyzed each video, the description, the titles, the tags - everything involved in making that video and what made it a success, and I tried to repeat it. And I've had some good luck with that. One of them I retitled it and tagged it, and it's gone viral now,' Chism said.
Chism originally focused on lawn care videos, until Toy Freaks exploded in popularity
The Toy Freaks videos also sometimes included family friends and creepy masked characters
Toy Freaks’ most-viewed video was 'Bad Baby Real Food Fight Victoria vs Annabelle & Freak Daddy Toy Freaks Family,' which had 622million total views.
Over time, the Toy Freaks channel came to specialize in gross-out videos featuring strange food and simulated vomiting.
In one video, titled 'Crying baby Bad baby Alien Crushes Bad Baby Picnic Food with Lawn Mower Freak Family Annabelle', features Chism's two daughters with pacifiers gathering food in a basket.
The girls repeatedly slide down the stairs and have the food snatched from them by a man masked as the Night King, who then crushes the food with a lawn mower.
'It's fun, it's creative, it's rewarding - and it can be financially rewarding as well,' Chism explained in the 2015 interview.
Toy Freaks had the potential to earn upwards of $13million per year from ad revenue, according to analytics site Social Blade.
Calls to a phone number listed for Chism went answered Friday evening.
