Littlest Pet Shop (YouTube)

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Fandom
Name(s): Littlest Pet Shop Community, LPSCommunity, Petters, Petshoppers
Abbreviation(s): LPS
Scope/Focus: Toys, Aesthetics, YouTube
Date(s): 2005 -
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The Littlest Pet Shop YouTube fandom (shortened to "LPStube") is a community of videographers on YouTube that make videos, such as music videos and episodic series, with the Littlest Pet Shop toys by Hasbro.

LPS YouTuber content consists of the YouTuber recording themself playing with their LPS toys and sets, with the only body part visible being their hands. Some of the earliest known LPStube videos, including the video that originated the trend of including hands in shot, date to 2007 (for more, see Fandom).

Sometimes LPStubers make their own dioramas rather than relying on pre-made official playsets. These videos almost always have a plot that the videographer acts out through the toys, unless they are one-off music videos. Some have compared LPStube videos to a type of of stop motion,[1] though most videos are recorded in real time rather than frame-by-frame.

Littlest Pet Shop (LPS) toys are also frequently used in kidcore (aesthetic blogging with a focus on nostalgic toys) aesthetic communities, especially on Tumblr; these sometimes overlap with LPStube fandom.

Because Littlest Pet Shop has multiple television shows there are different tags online to differentiate between their fandoms. "LPStube" refers to the toy-based fandom on YouTube and "LPS 2012" refers to the 2012 cartoon.

History

Hasbro's Littlest Pet Shop toys and sets began selling in 1992 and were re-designed in 2005. The 2005 iteration was a huge success and spawned the LPStube fandom. LPStube generally excludes the toys made before 2005, which are severely different in style.

Generations of LPS toys are released every few years, with designs changing slightly each time, with the fandom considering the 2005 generation "generation 1." The wave years are: 2005, 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2017. The toy generation between 2005-2008 are mostly similar, however the 2012 generation and beyond more-so resembled the 2012 Littlest Pet Shop show, likely in an attempt to sell merchandise of the show itself. According to YouTuber Izzzyzzz, the 2012 toyline was so widely disliked that the tag "bring back old LPS" was created.[2] Though the 2012-2017 designs look closer to LPS 2012, the 2018 Littlest Pet Shop cartoon "Littlest Pet Shop: A World of Our Own" resembles the 2005 toy line. This may be because the 2012 designs were not as popular as the older toy designs among the community.

Fandom

A still from the video Littlest Pet Shop: The Haunted House, uploaded on 21st November 2007.

The LPS community on YouTube was around long before the animated series in 2012, thriving as a group of young toy collectors and amateur videographers. It was especially popular with children and girls (with LPS advertising being directly focused on these demographics), and may have been the encouragement for some of them to start their YouTube careers, based on how some of them still exist and create the same content in 2020 despite growing up. One of the first, if not the first, LPStube videos was titled "The Dance," which was a 37 second long stop motion from 2007. Then the video Littlest Pet Shop: The Haunted House, uploaded by LPSlover in late 2007 started the trend of live recording with the use of hands.[2]

A good example of a LPS YouTuber is an artist by the username TabbyCat LPS, who'd been making LPS videos since 2014. While many of the videos received no more than 700 or so views, the music videos would receive thousands, and her "Coldhearted" plot-based series from 2015 did as well. The first Coldhearted video, as of Oct 2020, has 74K views.[3] Her last video was from 2019 where she was attempting to sell some of her LPS collection.

Another YouTuber, named LPSShannah, had been making LPS videos since 2010, most of them plot related. All her LPS videos would reach thousands of viewers, from as low as 70K to over 180K, though her videos from 2019 and 2020 began dipping into 30K-20K. She'd been making her videos more professional in appearance as she grew up, until finally, on Aug 1, 2020, she uploaded what she said "might be her last LPS video ever." She stated that due to COPPA, her ad revenue dropped by 80% overnight.[4]

An LPS channel called Awesome Possum productions made a video on Jan 17, 2020, discussing the future of her channel in relation to the new COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) regulations that struck YouTube around that time. The channels in the LPS YouTube community simultaneously leaving or changing channel direction in late 2019 and early 2020 may have been related to this law change, because it meant videos aimed at children would be demonetized.[5]

LPStube series that get popular drive up the demand for the toys used within the series. For example, Littlest Pet Shop: Popular's use of cat #339, a blonde seal point cat, drove up the demand for toy #339.

A news article about the fandom says:

Fans of Littlest Pet Shop, or “LPS,” as they call them, are nothing short of creative. The Instagram community is abundant with “toy photography,” where fans will pose their LPS and create intriguing scenarios with witty captions. (And just for fun, I’ve included photos from my own LPS Instagram below.) Searching ‘Littlest Pet Shop’ on Instagram will display 225,000 results, and searching the more popular “LPS” will garner a whopping 560,000 images. Not to mention the size of the YouTube community, where videographers will film their LPS in a creative stop-motion style. The top LPS YouTuber’s videos amass hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of views within a few days. And Instagram photographers can earn thousands of likes in a matter of hours.[1]

Littlest Pet Shop: Popular

The most popular and well known LPStuber series was Littlest Pet Shop: Popular. It was begun in 2010 by a minor and YouTuber named SophieGTV. It ran for two seasons but was never completed, with Sophie having seemingly abandoned her LPS content around the same time other LPStubers did. The last episode to be released was on Jan 2019, leaving the story incomplete. Still, this timeline would make Littlest Pet Shop: Popular one of the longest running, if not the longest running, LPStube series. Izzzyzzz credits SeophieGTV and LPS: Popular for putting LPStube "into its golden age."[2]

LPS Popular was well received enough to spawn a myrid of fanworks, including drawings, other videos, and a small amount of fanfiction. The tag "SophieGTV" is used to tag LPS Popular fanart on Tumblr, where depicting the two main characters as anthros is common.

Fanworks

Visual

Videos

Fanfiction

Community

Meta & Further Reading

References

  1. ^ a b The Hidden Gem That Is Littlest Pet Shop, Entertainment Earth. No date. (Accessed 12/14/2020) (Archived 4/15/2022)
  2. ^ a b c A Deep Dive Into Littlest Pet Shop, YouTube. May 17, 2021 (Accessed 5/29/2021) (Archived 4/15/2022)
  3. ^ Littlest Pet Shop: Coldhearted (Season 1, Episode 1, "Popularity"), Youtube. Dec 28, 2015 (Accessed 10/29/2020) (Archived 4/15/2022)
  4. ^ 10 Years. Thank You, YouTube. Aug 1, 2020 (Accessed 10/29/2020) (Archived 4/15/2022)
  5. ^ A New Chapter, YouTube. Jan 17, 2020 (Accessed 10/29/2020) (Archived 4/15/2022)
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