Guy Pushed A 2,000-Pound Bath Bomb Into A Pool – And The Results Were Truly Epic

The task at hand obviously required a lot of planning. You’re unlikely to find a bath bomb of this magnitude in the cosmetic aisle at Target, after all. And, yes, that meant the Vat19 crew had to build the giant fizzy ball themselves. So, where did they start?

It’s easy to find bath bomb recipes online, but there’s no guidebook for building a 2,000-pound one! Even so, the Vat19 folks managed to pull the thing off, landing themselves in the Guinness World Records book at the same time. Yep, what they went on to create wasn’t just any bath bomb, it was the biggest the world has ever seen. Pretty impressive, right?

After experimenting with regular-sized bath bombs, the team realized exactly what color they wanted to turn their swimming pool. This didn’t mean simply filling their 2,000-pound sphere with a ton of dye, mind you. If the intrepid bomb-builders wanted the signature fizzing sound, they’d have to use traditional ingredients as well.

But even with those ingredients, no one could predict what would happen when the gigantic bath bomb hit the water. Would it even work? What if it just sank to the bottom? Could it even explode? There was only one way to find out, and the experimental bunch were, of course, prepared to see it through.

The events that unfold in Vat19’s YouTube video are enough to make everyone poolside start screaming and shouting. You see, when the bubbling bomb finally smashes into the water, it makes for a truly epic backyard display. And so we don’t miss what’s going on beneath the surface, one guy even jumps into the pool to get a closer look at how the effervescent ball starts to react.

Of course, most bath bombs are not this extreme, as Mo Constantine can tell you. She’s a co-founder of cosmetics firm Lush – the “number one purveyor of bath bombs,” according to a 2018 piece by Fast Company. And, in fact, it was Constantine herself who came up with the bath bomb idea three decades ago. She’d wanted to create a product that would make water feel more luxurious without damaging the most sensitive skin. We bet, though, that she never anticipated the YouTubers’ crazy behavior years down the line!

According to Lush’s website, Constantine has said of her original concept, “I wanted to be able to introduce things to the bath [that] you wouldn’t normally be able to, such as peels, petals, butters and essential oils – lovely ingredients [that] would be beneficial to the skin.” And that initial vision was simple – much less showy than the colorful, fizzing bath bombs of today.

Now, Lush’s bath bombs have become so intricate that staffers actually make them one by one, according to Reader’s Digest. First, they blend sodium bicarbonate with that particular recipe’s fragrance and colors. Then the makers add citric acid into the mix. And after that, all the ingredients are poured into sphere-shaped molds and packed tightly by hand.

Interestingly, the basis of every Lush bath bomb has been mostly the same since Constantine first came up with the idea. She found that combining sodium bicarbonate – also known as baking soda – with citric acid created the perfect, soothingly fizzy reaction. The various extra ingredients are then added to that simple concoction. There are essential oils, for example, or coloring and all-natural glitter. Whatever takes your fancy, really!

Other brands use different ingredients, though. Pearl Bath Bombs incorporate Epsom salts, which can relieve tension and tightness in the muscles. There’s also almond oil – an addition that quenches and smooths the skin. As for fragrance, the company only drops in essential oils such as lavender and lemongrass. These scents, the makers say, give an all-natural, spa-like quality to the bombs of their brand.

But how exactly has this popular bath product evolved from when it was first invented? They don’t appear to have gotten any bigger, for one – well, certainly not as big as Vat19’s anyway! To explain more, Lush’s brand and product trainer, Meghan Campbell, spoke to Reader’s Digest about the store’s signature product. Today, you see, the bath bombs that are sold are apparently much brighter than the ones that first came onto the market.

In 2017 Campbell explained to the magazine, “The reason that we use color at all is to add to the effervescent, multi-sensory experience a bath bomb is intended to provide. Colors are capable of impacting our dispositions in much the same way essential oils have been shown to have an effect on our moods. And, for us, the color and the spectacle is half the fun!”

For others, though, the best part of a bath bomb is the fizzing sensation and wonderful smell. People will naturally have different preferences when it comes to finding the perfect bomb, and that’s why experimenting at home can be a great try-before-you-buy solution. Don’t fret: they’re actually relatively simple to make! The key – and arguably most obscure – ingredient is citric acid, although it’s still pretty straightforward to order online.

The rest of the components of bath bombs are a piece of cake to find – so easy, in fact, that you might even have them in your pantry already. Yes, according to Byrdie.com, all you’ll need is baking soda, Epsom salt, cornstarch and water. For the scent, color and feeling of luxury, simply add a few drops of essential oil, food coloring and skin-softening body oil, respectively.

And if you really want to, you could scale up the production of your homemade bath bomb to make one large enough for a swimming pool. That’s what the folks behind the YouTube channel Vat19 decided to do, anyway. Getting this creative and experimental wasn’t a new venture for the online entrepreneurs, either.

Most of Vat19’s YouTube channel serves its online store, which sells interesting products, toys, gadgets and more. And the team don’t just curate their stock with care, they also post videos of how each item works. Like we said, though, they also partner this content with videos that document their outlandish experiments.

The Vat19 gang explain on their channel’s “About” page, “We produce amazing challenge videos [and] document our outrageous contraptions. And [we] invite you to a front-row seat for our silly stunts. Sometimes we blow things up, fill up a bathtub or pool with crazy stuff, dare each other to eat super-spicy foods and answer ‘burning questions’ from our viewers.”

The Vat19 team have no problem playing with scale, either. In one experiment shared in March 2018, they decide to prep a bowl of cereal comprised of just marshmallows. It doesn’t sound like an earth-shattering project until, of course, you realize how much cereal they had – and the size of the bowl they needed.

The YouTubers apparently purchased 720 pounds of Just Cereal Marshmallows, and that sheer volume meant they had to engineer their own bowl to hold the whole lot! In Vat19’s video, the team cover a mold with epoxy and fiberglass – the same material used to make boats – so that the receptacle is sturdy enough to hold all of the breakfast and the milk. And, of course, there’s also a spoon: a six-foot-long utensil they commissioned because no other ladle would do.

Then, just over a year later, the Vat19 crew decided to add to their collection of homemade giant treats. This time, though, they hoped to fill a gap in the dessert market by preparing the largest-ever Jell-O cup. Yep, the experimental bunch shelled out a whopping $1,000 for 500 pounds of cherry-flavored gelatin.

But it turned out that getting 500 pounds of gelatin to set was much more difficult than the team first imagined. Who would have thought? The vat even grew a layer of mold on top! No matter. The YouTubers simply scraped it off and completed their project. To top it all off, one of the guys then jumped into the massive cup filled with 40-degree Jell-O. Even that may not have been their craziest experiment to date, though.

Clearly, creating oversized items is one of the Vat19 team’s specialties. But neither the jello nor the cereal is seen as their most impressive feat – according to the Guinness World Records list, at least. There, you’ll find the YouTubers have an entry for the largest ever bath bomb.

The idea for the ridiculously huge bath bomb came from, well, a regular-sized bath bomb. It’s one they sell on their site, and it has the power to turn clear water black without staining the tub. This led the Vat19 team to wonder, as they explain in their June 2018 YouTube video, “How big would the bomb need to be to black out an entire swimming pool?”

For those of you who are curious, the Vat19 video walks viewers through the bath bomb’s incredible and complex construction. To start, the team must make a mold for their giant fizzy ball, and they rely on a method they’ve tried and tested before. Remember how they used fiberglass to construct the massive cereal bowl? Well, they do the same to create both halves of the spherical mold needed for this project.

Then, with a sturdy mold completed, the Vat19 team shift their focus to the bomb itself. And, funnily enough, they rely on the same ingredients that you would find in the small spheres designed for the tub. For this mammoth version, however, they need much more than just a few spoonfuls of citric acid, baking soda and food coloring.

In total, the Vat19 folks purchased 31 different 50-pound bags of materials – or so they’ve claimed. But the recipe that they use to combine all those supplies together is relatively simple. In the video, the group explain that they mixed one part each of cornstarch and citric acid to two parts baking soda. Then, to that powdery blend, they add enough dye to turn the bomb black.

As you can see from the clip, pressing all of that into a spherical mold is, understandably, a process. First, the powder mix goes into the bottom half of the fiberglass outline. Then the Vat19 crew add some dye to darken the whole thing up. After that, the team pat the mixture down, flattening and packing it tightly into place. No one wants a crumbly bath bomb, do they?

Now, in order to completely fill the bottom portion of their bath bomb mold, the gang have to repeat that same process seven to eight times. They then wheel the half-sphere out into the sunlight because, as one person explains in the YouTube video, they need to “dry this sucker out.” And once it’s firmed up, the experimenters put the second half of their sphere mold on top and continue to build up the bomb.

In the clip, a few cheers can be heard after that step of the process is complete – but the Vat19ers know they still have a few hoops to jump through. For one, they need to figure out how on earth they’ll get their giant bath bomb out of its mold. The idea behind letting it harden for a day is that it doesn’t fall apart. Even so, the round, heavy object will presumably be tough to control and maneuver at any consistency.

From the events that unfold in the video, it’s clear that the crew must have a good amount of faith in their creation – so much, in fact, that they decide to unshell their bath bomb right next to the pool. That way, after the fiberglass casing and its supports are removed, the experimenters can simply tip the container and plop the sphere right into the water. Then they’ll finally get to see if the experiment actually worked.

Luckily, the supports and shell come off with ease, and the Vat19ers pull away the casing to reveal a perfectly spherical, tightly pressed bath bomb in the middle. And the sheer size of the powdery ball shocks even the crew who made it. One of them exclaims, “That’s one big bath bomb, y’all.”

With the massive bath bomb unsheathed, there is only one thing left to do: push it into the pool and see what happens. We already know what transpires when a regular-sized bomb hits bathwater. But how will a ton of the stuff react when it falls into H2O?

With only one push, the bath bomb starts to roll toward the water, falling in with a huge splash. Initially, it sinks to the bottom, but it rises back up to the surface as it starts to fizz. This move elicits screams from the Vat19 team, and that includes the sole swimmer who entered the pool alongside the 2,000-pound creation.

In the clip, it quickly becomes clear that the massive bath bomb won’t do any harm, though. Instead, it gently bubbles as it changes the color of the pool. The aquamarine-tinted waters start turning an opaque gray – and as the sphere fizzes, it spreads its dye to every corner.

There’s yet another bonus, too. Because the Vat19 bath bomb is so large, it doesn’t disappear with the same hastiness of a handheld version. So, those who’ve now also entered the pool can pick up chunks of the baking soda-based ball. In the YouTube video, they’re seen patting and smashing it onto their hands as the main chunk continues to fizz.

And, naturally, those who viewed Vat19’s clip had plenty to say about the impressive experiment. One commenter said that the record-breaking bomb was the perfect response to their mom telling them, “You can only use one bath bomb in the tub.” Another joked that the pool’s filter was probably saying, “Here we go again.”

But the video also left a few folks wondering how the Vat19 crew would ever “get the pool back to normal.” And although the bath bomb builders didn’t address this topic in their YouTube clip, another fan theorized that it would need emptying and refilling to get rid of any powdery remnants.

One commenter even suggested that they’d preferred the look of the pool pre-bomb explosion. They wrote, “Can we all just get a moment to appreciate the fact that the water looks so refreshing and clean before they put in the bath bomb?” That comment got 85 likes, so others clearly felt the same way, too!

Regardless of opinions like those, the Vat19 bath bomb experiment was a viral sensation. At time of writing, the clip has nearly 30 million views on YouTube – which, by anyone’s standards, is pretty good going. But what about the people who actually built the 2,000-pound bomb? Well, as you may expect, they’ve continued with their crazy experiments. Since then, for instance, the team have gone on to build the world’s largest stress ball and a 135-pound gummy burger, to name just two of their incredible creations.