20TH CENTURY FOX(LOS ANGELES) — ‘Tis the season for porch pirates. However, one dynamic duo teamed up to teach a handful of thieves an important lesson about taking something that doesn’t belong to them.
Last year, NASA engineer-turned-YouTuber Mark Rober created a glitter bomb explicitly made to trick thieves after a porch pirate stole one of his packages. The bomb detonated when the would-be-crook opened the box and promptly doused him or her with glitter and pungent fart spray.
Although his prank was successful, Rober’s creation required a few tweaks.
So, the engineer called in the inspiration behind his dastardly revenge device, Macaulay Culkin, to help build “Glitter Bomb Trap 2.0.“
“Home Alone was the entire inspiration for the glitter bomb,” explained Rober as he and Culkin began improving their porch pirate trapper, which took 11 months to perfect.
The new device was upgraded with biodegradable fine glitter, better cameras and recording equipment, a deadlier smelling fart spray (which Macaulay tested and promptly began choking,) audio cues that included a mysterious countdown, and recordings from a police scanner.
As part of the prank, Rober built several devices and shipped them to fans victimized by porch pirates across the U.S. with the sole intent of tormenting as many thieves as possible. He tasked his volunteers to leave the boxes, which were made to look like a Bose headphones package, in plain view on their porch.
While the prank video contained a delicious amount of schadenfreude, it also proved that there’s many good Samaritans out there. Several people noticed the packages out in the open and, instead of stealing them, either pushed them out of direct view or took them into their house for their neighbor to collect later.
To thank those heroes for their honesty, Rober personally handed them $400 each.
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