The Crispy Squishy Craze: Why Are Young People Willing to Pay for "Crushing"?
"Every once in a while, a new squishy toy goes viral."
Recently, crispy squishy toys have become a breakout hit on Xiaohongshu. By the end of September, the total views of related topics on Xiaohongshu have reached nearly 200 million.
Image source: Xiaohongshu
Various types of crispy squishy toy videos keep emerging. Among them, the creator @Squishy Queen posted a video of making homemade crispy squishy toys: making simulated egg yolk with glycerin and pigment, filling it into an eggshell, squeezing it with your hand, it cracks with a "click" sound, and easily gains more than 100,000 likes.
Image source: Xiaohongshu
Operators in Yiwu have more direct feelings: from May to June, orders for square squishy toys and crispy squishy toys gradually increased, and the factory's order backlog has required a waiting time of more than 1 month.
People who do not play with squishy toys may feel confused: what is a crispy squishy toy?
Simply put, it is a new species of squishy toy, and the most obvious difference is that its outer skin is crispy. In the past, squishy toys in bags could be squeezed repeatedly, but now they have a one-time crispy outer layer. Many video contents show that creators take them out of the bag and squeeze them directly, and the process of crushing them itself constitutes the content.
With innovation and upgrading, some people add building blocks to clay, and some combine the crushing sound with ASMR, which has pushed a "hand-feeling toy" into a "multi-sensory experience product".
However, from the perspective of TopKlout, what really deserves to be questioned is not "why crispy squishy toys are popular".
It is a more essential question: In a category where the average survival cycle of hit products is getting shorter and shorter, why can a new squishy toy break out every once in a while? Why are young people willing to keep paying for the act of "crushing"?
01
A category that keeps updating and is highly addictive
To understand crispy squishy toys, you must first know that they did not appear out of thin air.
The squishy toy category has roughly gone through at least three generations of iterations.
The earliest one was the "stress-relief bun" filled with flour, which had a relatively hard hand feeling and a simple shape. The second generation added vaseline, maltose and pectin to change the hand feeling, making it softer and slower to rebound, and silicone squishy toys began to become the mainstream. Now, crispy squishy toys use wax crispy shells to create "cracking sounds", which is already the third generation.
Image source: Xiaohongshu
The interval between each generation of iteration is getting shorter and shorter. It took several years from the stress-relief bun to silicone squishy toys; it only took a few months from silicone squishy toys to crispy squishy toys. Some Yiwu operators also revealed in news interviews: "Maltose squishy toys were quite popular in April this year, and orders for square squishy toys and crispy squishy toys gradually increased from May to June."
From the perspective of TopKlout, the special feature of crispy squishy toys' breakout popularity is that they have turned "one-time use" into a selling point. The wax skin breaks as soon as it is squeezed, and it is over once broken, there is no possibility of repeated play. In the past, squishy toys were "can be squeezed all the time", but now crispy squishy toys are "can only be squeezed once". But it is precisely the "can only be squeezed once" feature that strengthens the urge to "buy another one".
In a category that "you can never finish buying", consumables are more profitable than collectibles.
Image source: Xiaohongshu
On Xiaohongshu, almost all high-likes notes are "immersive squeezing" videos, not product reviews. What users watch is not just what the squishy toy looks like and how much it costs, but the moment when the wax skin cracks, which has visual impact and crisp cracking sound, and the whole process is so short that it can be completed within 3 seconds.
These 3 seconds are the strongest content attraction point of crispy squishy toys.
This also makes it naturally suitable for short videos. What users consume is not product information, but the decompressive visual and auditory experience. Just as a user commented in the Xiaohongshu comment area, "It feels so good to squeeze, I feel that I will be a little reluctant to squeeze after buying it". This contradiction of "reluctant to squeeze but finally squeeze it" just shows that consumers are not just buying the product itself, but the emotional release and social sharing value brought by the moment of crushing it.
The category boundaries are also dissolving. The logic of crispy squishy toys has spilled over the toy track. The series of simulated food squishy toys produced in Yiwu have not only entered major domestic snack chain stores and campus convenience stores, but also sold far to Japan, South Korea, Europe, America and Southeast Asia, becoming a cross-border e-commerce viral hit.
Similarly, according to reports from Shanghai Observer, the 299-yuan high-end squishy cake from Shanghai brand Molynk has exceeded 180 million views on TikTok, and 5000 units for the global debut were sold out immediately.
Why can a thing that "disappears once crushed" support such a high popularity?
02
What consumers buy is not squishy toys
It is the "moment of crushing"
"Stress relief" is the most obvious explanation, but it is not precise enough.
Wang Lili, an expert in consumer behavior from Zhejiang University, once analyzed that young people are facing the dilemma of lack of sense of control. Stress-relief toys "on the one hand make up for the lack of sense of control of individuals in their daily and trivial work, and on the other hand, find an outlet for them to vent".
But bubble wrap can also relieve stress, why isn't there a 100-billion market for bubble wrap?
The essential difference between crispy squishy toys and bubble wrap is that: Bubble wrap has no "new styles", but squishy toys get new styles every few weeks.
The word "crispy" itself is an accurate emotional symbol. It not only has the product attribute that the wax skin breaks as soon as it is squeezed, but also implies the user portrait of "crispy young people" under pressure.
A good product concept itself is a piece of communication copy. In this way, crispy squishy toys have completed the dual tasks of product positioning and user expression at the same time.
Deeper down, crispy squishy toys satisfy a kind of "instant feedback emotional consumption". The moment the wax skin breaks has visual impact, and the crisp cracking sound brings auditory satisfaction. The superposition of these conditions makes it naturally have the gene of spreading on social platforms.
Image source: Xiaohongshu
At present, consumers who are willing to pay are mainly divided into two categories.
One category is the practical faction who "calculates cost performance", who values the essence of squishy toys "being used" or even "being destroyed", and the delicate styles are only suitable for collection. The other category is the emotional faction who "calculates the sense of belonging", who values companionship and community belonging. They discuss good-looking and good-hand-feeling squishy toys with everyone online, "the feeling of finding like-minded people is very healing". If a certain design is unique enough, they are willing to pay a higher price even for products from individual sellers.
Both spend money on squishy toys, the former calculates cost performance, the latter calculates sense of belonging. These two types of consumers determine the market structure of crispy squishy toys. But demand alone is not enough, someone has to catch it.
03
Who is producing "crushing", who is spreading "crushing"
What catches this market are two tracks with completely different rhythms: factories and handmade creators.
Factories meet the needs of "speed" and "low decision-making cost", and can complete the whole process from proofing to mass shipment within one or two weeks after a hit product appears. Handmade creators rely more on time cost and continuous creative output ability. This is a craft work, and what creators sell is actually their own time and aesthetic judgment, which can attract people who are willing to pay for "uniqueness".
The two tracks have their own advantages and disadvantages. On these two lines, there is also an indispensable third type of role - content creators.
At present, the price of crispy squishy toys on the market is mostly around 30 yuan, and the cheaper ones are also more than ten yuan, but crispy squishy toys are one-time use, and they are gone once crushed.
Some video creators even need to prepare about 600 yuan worth of squishy toys to shoot an unboxing or review video of crispy squishy toys, which is equivalent to about 20 units.
Image source: Xiaohongshu
The cost is not low, why are creators still willing to shoot?
Because the content attribute of crispy squishy toys is stronger than its functional attribute from the very beginning. When a blogger replied "less than 600 yuan" in the comment area, some netizens were shocked "My god, people who don't play squishy toys are so shocked by the 600 yuan cost", but the view data of this video is enough to cover the cost. It can be said that what creators buy is not products, but content materials.
According to the observation of TopKlout, the creators currently active in the squishy toy content ecosystem are roughly divided into three categories, with different revenue models.
The first category is ordinary enthusiasts, who buy squishy toys to shoot videos and share experiences, and their revenue mainly comes from platform traffic sharing and advertisement placement.
The consumption logic of this type of creator is similar to that of ordinary consumers, the difference is that their purchase behavior itself can "pay back".
The second category is self-made creators, who make squishy toys by themselves and sell them through Xiaohongshu stores, Xianyu or private domain channels. The customer unit price is usually between 15 and 40 yuan, and the business model is mainly "limited quantity + pre-sale", relying on differentiated design and hand feel to maintain repeat customers.
Image source: Xiaohongshu
The third category is creators with product links or merchants who sell squishy toys. Based on factory supply, they make profits through live streaming and short video sales by large volume.
The common point of these three types of creators is: content ability is more important than product ability. The advantage of a handmade blogger is not only that he makes squishy toys better than others, but also that "the process of making squishy toys" is shot better than others. The advantage of a live streaming merchant is not only that the supply is cheaper than others, but also that he works part-time as a content creator to shoot "the moment of crushing squishy toys".
Handmade creators, factories and content creators, the three tracks respectively catch different parts of the demand side of "fast, new, shootable", and each bears different bottlenecks. The tension and complementarity between the three are the real supply-side reasons why this category can produce a new hit product every few weeks.
04
The next wave of opportunities is not in "squishy toys"
It is in instant feedback
Back to the original question: Why are young people willing to pay for "crushing"?
The category popularity of crispy squishy toys will eventually fade. But the "content-driven emotional consumption" model it verified will not.
TopKlout believes that the opportunity window for the emotional consumption track in the future is not "lower price", but "stronger shootability", whether the product can make users have the urge to "I want to shoot it" within 3 seconds.
It can be known from the fact that almost all high-likes notes on Xiaohongshu are "immersive squeezing" videos that what users consume is not product information, but the decompressive visual and auditory experience.
In addition, TopKlout made a judgment at the 2026 New Media Ecology Conference earlier this year: "The standards of consumption decisions have shifted to emotion, and the way of communication between brands and users has also reached a time that must be re-examined."
Crispy squishy toys have verified this sentence. When a product has both instant sensory feedback, shootability and other conditions, it can achieve far more explosive power than the category average in the emotional consumption track.
The next breakout product will not be a "better squishy toy", it will be the first person to turn the next "