In December 2018, NASA engineer turned YouTuber Mark Rober released a video that went mega-viral, racking up over 77 million views. That video was called: “Package Thief vs. Glitter Bomb Trap.”
The video began with Rober talking about how a package was stolen from his door step several months prior. He went to the police with security camera footage of the package thief, but according to Rober, they said it simply wasn’t worth the time.
This got him thinking, and he developed a bait package that, when opened, would shoot out very fine glitter from a rotating top, and squirt “fart spray” into the air. Not only that, the engineer positioned four cellphone cameras inside the package to record the thieves getting their just desserts.
The return address on the packages read “Kevin McCallister,” the main character from the “Home Alone” films, played by Macaulay Culkin – Rober’s stated inspiration for his devious device.
The mission was successful, and the recordings hilarious, with multiple package thieves getting glitter bombed and fart sprayed.
You can check out that video here.
On Sunday, Rober released a sequel to the original package thief video, titled: “Porch Pirate vs. Glitter Bomb Trap 2.0.” Oh, and Rober got Macaulay Culkin to appear in the video, too.
This “new and improved custom-built bait package” features a tighter design, a pound of biodegradable glitter, a significantly worse smelling fart spray, and voice features, including a countdown and phony police chatter.
“We started with a complete redesign of the box to make it more streamlined and secure. For contrast, last year’s design was a bit of a rat’s nest,” states Rober in the new video. “The fundamentals are still the same, where you have a battery-powered custom-printed circuit board on the bottom that has a built-in accelerometer so it can sense when it’s been jostled, and then it tells these four phones to start recording – and these are wide-angle lenses. So, as you can see, you’ll be able to record the thief no matter which side they open it from.”
Rober begins the sequel video by recounting the story that drove him to make the first glitter bomb, noting that “1.7 million packages are either stolen or go missing every day.”
He continues, stating that it took him and his friend Sean Hodgins ten months of “designing, building, and testing” to reach a “new and improved design.” Rober adds that the fart spray will be squirted “every 30 seconds to ensure [the thieves] get rid of the package out of their house before they realize there [are] four phones inside.” This way, with the help of GPS, there is a higher chance of package recovery.
If the packages are unrecoverable, the phones are set to upload the footage to the cloud.
Although there were some issues with the first few bait packages, Rober notes, once the kinks were worked out, and the thieves began to bring the packages home, the resulting footage (and vigilante justice) is incredibly satisfying to watch.
Check out the new video below to watch the disappointment and panic of the box bandits:
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