Me contro Te, the child-charmers

The Pied Piper, a figure from a German legend set in the town of Hamelin in Lower Saxony, became widely known through the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale “The Pied Piper.” According to the story, the children of the town followed him, “hypnotised” by his music. In a sense, the children of Hamelin are still marching today. Except that the enchanters have stepped out of the fairy tales and no longer need a flute: they have a smartphone, a YouTube channel, TikTok, Instagram. And there is a substantial difference. The spell has become a business model. First, they make them fall in love. Then they try to sell them a rucksack. And through the sale of rucksacks and much more, they have built veritable empires. The only difference is that the targets of this strategy are five, six or seven years old, and the rucksack, of course, is paid for by their parents. It is within this vicious circle that the perfectly oiled machine of ‘Me Contro Te’ has ground to a halt – the candy-coloured empire built by Luigi Calagna, 33, and Sofia Scalia, 29: Luì and Sofì to millions of children. On 14 September, Consumerismo No Profit filed an injunction against their company at the Civil Court of Palermo, challenging commercial practices deemed aggressive and misleading, and also raising concerns about the processing of children’s personal data. The main focus is on the transition – deemed by the association to be insufficiently clear – from entertainment to sales: the website featured a ‘Shop’ section, followed by the prompt ‘Go to the shop!’, which, via an affiliate link, led directly to Amazon. Three clicks – perhaps fewer – and the fairy tale already came at a price.

The allegations will have to be assessed by the courts. At present, no breach has been established, nor is there any order requiring the site to be shut down, although it has not been accessible since 21 September. Instead, a screen appears announcing its temporary suspension for ‘technical updates and optimisation’. The timing is striking: the site went offline a week after the appeal was lodged. The link between the two events, however, has not been established. Consumerismo’s complaint was also served on the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Trapani regarding privacy issues. But it would be simplistic to focus solely on the legal aspect. Because behind that deactivated page lay – and will certainly continue to lie – one of the most impressive commercial enterprises built in Italy around children’s imagination. The figures are staggering: 1.6 million followers on Instagram; by September 2026, the channel had reached 7.38 million subscribers on YouTube and surpassed 12 billion total views; in addition to 3.5 million followers on TikTok. These figures bear witness to the ability – if not the power – to attract and retain an audience for years on end. To this audience must be added their other channels and social media platforms, along with films, books, music, shows, toys, clothing, school supplies, and a company whose net worth, according to the latest financial statements, exceeded 29.1 million euros. An impressive achievement for two young men from Partinico who might otherwise have pursued entirely different paths.

Luigi was studying Pharmacy. Sofia was attending a science-focused secondary school and aspired to study Medicine. In 2014 came the turning point: a mobile phone, YouTube and their first challenges. At first, a hundred people watched them, mainly friends and family. They reached a thousand subscribers and discovered from the comments that their audience consisted largely of children. They even set themselves a target: if they didn’t reach ten thousand, perhaps it would be best to stop. They didn’t get the chance. They reached 300,000. Luigi dropped out of Pharmacy and switched to Communication Studies, explaining that he wanted to acquire the tools to better understand and manage this new line of work. Sofia also tried university, but by then the machine was in full swing. The name came about almost by chance. Their videos were ‘challenges’, so they needed a ‘versus’. ‘Luì contro Sofì’ would have put Luigi first, whilst ‘Sofì contro Luì’ would have put her first. The solution satisfies everyone: Me Contro Te. In hindsight, a rather fortunate marketing decision. One of the questions Google inevitably associates with their names is: how much do they earn? The approximately 29 million euros in the latest financial statements is not what Luì and Sofì earn in a year: it represents the net assets of Me Contro Te Srl, in which the two each hold a 50 per cent stake. In 2025, the company recorded around 4 million in revenue from sales and services and 1.8 million in profit; its assets include around 19 million in property and over 10.6 million invested in funds and securities. Just to give a sense of scale, Kylian Mbappé’s estimated gross annual salary at Real Madrid is approximately 31 million euros. These are different financial magnitudes – accumulated corporate assets versus a single year’s salary – but the comparison clearly illustrates the distance travelled: from challenges in a bedroom to figures belonging to the realm of international superstars. And YouTube is now just one part of the picture. Cinema, publishing, music, shows, royalties. And merchandising. Lots of merchandising. T-shirts, hoodies, trainers, mirrors, diaries, cards, pencil cases, suitcases, rucksacks, dolls, water bottles, bed linen. Even wet wipes. A range that at a certain point ceases to look like a product line and begins to resemble a complete set of children’s furnishings. It is here that the phenomenon becomes more interesting than the turnover. No one forces a parent to buy a ‘Me Contro Te’ rucksack, and turning a brand into a whole product universe is a perfectly normal – and highly successful – business venture. The point is to understand how any ordinary object becomes desirable to a child simply because it belongs to that world. “At the heart of the success of idols lies a very powerful psychological mechanism: projective identification. Children – and, to some extent, adults too – do not merely admire their idol,’ explains psychiatrist Carmelo Zaffora, ‘but tend to identify with them and, inevitably, also to want to possess what they own or promote. Of course, identifying with a famous figure is not in itself a bad thing. The key is to understand what is being offered to the viewer and what role model is being presented.’

To sell the fairy tale, you first have to create it. In 2020, Luì and Sofì hit the big screen with "Me contro Te – Il film: La vendetta del Signor S", directed by Gianluca Leuzzi, which grossed a record-breaking €9.5 million. It was the first hit in a series of six films, to which the spin-off "Cattivissimi a Natale" would later be added. In 2022, Il mistero della scuola incantata won the David dello Spettatore (awarded to the Italian film that attracted the highest number of cinema-goers) at the David di Donatello Awards. In between, there are books, songs and concerts. The aesthetic is simple yet incredibly powerful: pink, fuchsia, light blue, enormous hats and bright pink ankle boots. The songs do what children’s songs have always been able to do: they transform a few words into a ritual. “Put your hands up, give a kiss to whoever you like…”. The vowels, the gestures. There’s no need to bring semiotics into it: the Zecchino d’Oro has known for decades the power of repetition, and the Macarena proved that four movements paired with a chorus can take the world by storm. Yet the true secret lies in the narratives. Amidst all that pink, a Russian gentleman who died over half a century ago makes an appearance: Vladimir Propp. In 1928, in Morfologia della fiaba, Propp dissected folk tales to understand why such vastly different stories always seemed to follow the same patterns. Princesses and dragons, forests and castles may change, but the hero, the antagonist, the mission, the trial, the helper, the gift, the magical object and the return always recur. We do not know whether the creators of Me Contro Te ever worked with Propp in mind. It does not matter. Propp emerges of his own accord. Luì and Sofì on screen are the heroes; Mr S (Pierpaolo Zizzi) is the antagonist who upsets the balance and sets the adventure in motion; Perfidia (Antonella Carone) is the accomplice who amplifies his actions; Pongo (Michele Savoia) is the helper who comes to the protagonists’ rescue. Children recognise a world built on the basic structure of the fairy tale. In the third instalment of the film saga – Persi nel tempo (2022) – magical objects make their appearance. An hourglass breaks and scatters the protagonists across the ages: Luì and Mr S end up in a future populated by robots, whilst Sofì and Perfidia find themselves in ancient Egypt, where they encounter the new antagonist, Viperiana. But in the meantime, the magical object has stepped out of the fairy tale: in today’s children’s entertainment industry, it can cross the screen and end up on the shelf. Children no longer have to merely imagine themselves as part of the story. They can buy a piece of it.

At this point, however, it would be all too easy to take offence. Perhaps even too much so. Because before Luì and Sofì, there were Paolo Bonolis, Manuela Blanchard, Licia Colò, the cartoons and that massive afternoon TV programme called Bim Bum Bam. Anyone who grew up in the 1980s remembers all too well that childhood was by no means a sanctuary protected from commercial interests. Advertisements, on-screen promotions, snacks, toys and merchandise linked to characters were an integral part of the commercial television ecosystem. The industry had long understood the economic power of a demographic with a rather curious characteristic: it has no income, yet it can influence the consumption choices of others. ‘Mum, will you buy this for me?’ So, it seems that little has changed. Television in the 1980s could be relentless, brazen and far less regulated than it is today. But it had a clear structure: the programme, the advert, the return to the programme. On-screen promotions were already blurring the lines, of course, but precisely because there were two distinct levels to blur. Digital technology can make them coincide. The creator is simultaneously a character, the face of the product, a perceived friend and, above all, a gateway to the shop.

Meanwhile, Luì and Sofì have taken an even more interesting step. They have actually welcomed children into their lives. On 5 September, they got married at the Unipol Dome in Milan in front of around six thousand paying spectators. Tickets ranged from 48 to 110 euros. An additional pass costing 250 euros was required to meet the bride and groom before the show. Mums and dads – whether reluctant or willing, it makes no difference – were busy booking tickets online, arranging transport and booking hotel rooms, all to fulfil their children’s desire to meet their idols. And so, in the final frontier of merchandising, love becomes marriage, marriage becomes a story, and the story becomes an event.

They truly love each other. They’ve been together since they were very young, and there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of their relationship. The question is where Luigi ends and Luì begins, where Sofia ends and Sofì begins, when even marriage becomes part of the economic universe built around these figures. This is not an entirely new question. Chiara Ferragni had built the most powerful international laboratory for the interweaving of biography, storytelling and commerce. The Balocco pandoro debacle showed just how quickly this mechanism can crumble when the public begins to question the boundary between personal narrative and sales. The key lies in a single word: trust. Followers can be bought, lost or replaced. Trust cannot. In the case of Me Contro Te, there is a further complication: that trust was built primarily with children – people who are still learning to distinguish a story from a commercial pitch. From Partinico to the present day, they have reached 12 billion views. Ever higher, climbing a little further each time. And here comes Icarus. Not as a prophecy of downfall, for that would be cheap moralising. The Me Contro Te empire is not crashing: it is wealthy, well-structured and followed by millions of people. The appeal lodged by Consumerismo has yet to be examined and could yield unexpected results. But Icarus is interesting because, at first, he flies beautifully. Daedalus built him extraordinary wings. The problem arises when the success of the flight erases any sense of limitation. Are the wings of ‘Me Contro Te’ and of all those people who, out of nowhere and unexpectedly, have built empires – through ingenuity and by harnessing the immense potential of digital platforms – made of wax, or are they as solid as marble? To find an answer, perhaps it is best to return to where it all began: to the Pied Piper of Hamelin. “Soon,” as the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale tells us, “it was not rats and mice that came out, but a great number of children—boys and girls from the age of four onwards—who rushed towards him. Continuing to play his pipe, he led them out through the Eastern Gate to a mountain, where he disappeared along with them.”

The rest of the ‘Me contro Te’ saga, however, is still to be written.