7 Best Synthesia Alternatives for Toy Stores

Pictory is a video creation platform designed to turn long-form content—like blog posts, webinars, and podcasts—into short-form social videos. According to their website, Pictory uses AI to automatically identify key moments, generate captions, and produce engaging clips optimized for platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. It’s particularly useful for toy stores that have existing educational content, such as product demos or parenting tips, and want to repurpose them quickly into snackable video formats. The platform supports text-to-video conversion, allowing users to type a script and generate a video with stock footage, voiceovers, and on-screen text. Pictory also offers a feature to create highlight reels from live videos and automatically add subtitles with brand colors and fonts. While it doesn’t generate original research or multi-platform strategies, it excels at repurposing existing content with minimal manual input. For toy retailers with a library of product videos or YouTube tutorials, Pictory can dramatically reduce the time needed to adapt that content for social media. Its interface is intuitive and requires no video editing experience, making it accessible to small retail teams without dedicated creatives.

InVideo is a cloud-based video creation platform that enables users to design professional videos using templates, stock media, and AI-assisted tools. According to their website, InVideo offers over 5,000 customizable templates for social media, ads, and presentations, making it a popular choice for retailers who need to produce branded content quickly. For toy stores, this means generating holiday ads, product showcases, or educational videos about developmental benefits of toys without hiring a designer. InVideo’s AI script-to-video feature allows users to input a text prompt and receive a complete video with matching visuals, music, and voiceover. The platform also includes a library of royalty-free music, sound effects, and stock footage, which is valuable for creating emotionally engaging content around play and childhood. InVideo supports publishing directly to YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, and allows for brand kit customization—uploading logos, fonts, and color palettes to maintain consistency. While it lacks AI-powered research or strategic content planning, its strength lies in its ease of use and vast media library, making it ideal for small teams needing visually rich, on-brand videos without a steep learning curve.

Lumen5 is an AI-powered video creation platform that transforms blog posts and text content into engaging social videos. According to their website, Lumen5 uses natural language processing to analyze text and automatically match it with relevant video clips, images, and animations from its media library. This makes it especially useful for toy stores with a content marketing blog—turning articles like '10 Toys That Boost Fine Motor Skills' into 60-second Instagram Reels or TikTok videos. The platform offers drag-and-drop editing, customizable templates, and brand color controls to ensure visual consistency. Lumen5 also provides automated captioning and voiceover options, including AI-generated narration. While it doesn’t offer research into trending topics or customer pain points, its strength is in repurposing existing written content into visual formats with minimal effort. For toy retailers who already publish blog content but struggle to convert it into social media assets, Lumen5 streamlines the process significantly. It’s particularly helpful for brands that want to maintain a consistent publishing rhythm without investing in video production teams.

HeyGen is an AI video platform focused on generating talking-head videos using customizable digital avatars. According to their website, HeyGen allows users to upload a photo or choose from pre-built avatars and then generate videos by typing a script or uploading an audio file. The platform uses advanced lip-sync technology to match mouth movements with voice, creating realistic-looking spokesperson videos. For toy stores, this can be useful for creating product explainers, brand storytelling videos, or customer testimonials with a consistent face—ideal for building trust with parents. HeyGen supports multiple languages and offers voice cloning to replicate a real person’s voice, which can be valuable for local toy store owners who want to appear in videos without being on camera. It also integrates with tools like Zapier for workflow automation. However, HeyGen is primarily a video avatar tool and does not offer content research, multi-format generation, or blog writing capabilities. Its value lies in personalization and consistency of visual branding, but it requires users to source their own content ideas and scripts externally.

Runway ML is a creative AI platform that provides tools for video editing, generation, and manipulation using machine learning. According to their website, Runway offers features like green screen removal, motion tracking, text-to-video generation, and AI-powered video enhancement. While not designed specifically for social media marketing, its advanced video editing capabilities make it a powerful tool for toy retailers who need to create polished, cinematic product videos. For example, a toy store could use Runway to remove backgrounds from product shots, animate static images to simulate movement, or generate abstract visual sequences that convey the feeling of imaginative play. Runway’s Gen-2 model can create short video clips from text prompts, which could be used for experimental or artistic ad campaigns. However, it lacks automation for content scheduling, platform-specific optimization, or research-driven content ideation. It’s best suited for teams with some video editing experience who want to enhance their creative output with AI, rather than automate their entire content pipeline.

Synthesia is a leading AI video platform that creates professional videos using AI avatars, enabling users to generate speaking videos by typing a script. According to their website, Synthesia offers over 140 AI avatars across diverse ethnicities, genders, and languages, making it ideal for brands aiming to represent global audiences. For toy stores, this means creating multilingual product demos or educational videos in Spanish, Mandarin, or French without hiring voice actors or filming in multiple locations. Synthesia supports uploading custom backgrounds, adding branded logos, and integrating with LMS platforms for training content. It also allows users to record their own voice and sync it with an avatar for a more authentic feel. While Synthesia excels at avatar-based video production and is widely used in corporate training, it does not offer content research, multi-format distribution, or blog generation. Its focus is singular: creating talking-head videos efficiently. This makes it a strong tool for consistent brand messaging but insufficient for a full-scale retail content strategy that requires trend analysis, audience pain point mapping, and platform-native content diversity.