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Simone Giertz and Adam Savage marked her arrival at Tested with a comic engineering challenge: a helmet that would bring popcorn to its wearer. Their April 7, 2016 collaboration was an international, one-day prototype—not a dependable appliance—and its barely-working finish is part of what makes the build interesting.
What did Simone Giertz and Adam Savage build?
They set out to mechanize the idea behind a beer helmet, replacing drinks with large handfuls of popcorn. A hand-like mechanism was meant to carry popcorn toward the person wearing the helmet. Giertz described her video as a celebration of joining Tested, and contemporaneous Make: coverage called it the pair’s first project together.
The project was presented as a Tested One Day Build. Savage worked from the Tested workshop while Giertz joined from Sweden; they coordinated remotely and exchanged parts internationally. Tested’s video description describes the international collaboration, and Giertz’s companion video identifies the build system as Actobotics from ServoCity.
How did the popcorn helmet work?
The concept used a mechanically actuated, hand-like feeder to move popcorn to the wearer. The collaborators split the work: Savage developed the hand-feeding mechanism and made parts with a vacuum-forming machine, while Giertz handled control, actuation, and assembly. Make: describes the result as a Rube Goldberg-like arrangement.
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The available accounts explain the design at a high level, but they do not provide a complete parts list, detailed build instructions, or confirmation of the exact helmet model. The beer-helmet comparison describes the inspiration; it does not establish which helmet, if any, served as the actual base.
Did the prototype work?
Only marginally. Make: reported that the finished contraption barely worked, so it is best understood as an entertaining prototype and a glimpse of iterative design—not a reliable way to feed yourself during a movie. The point is the collaboration and the attempt to turn a playful idea into a mechanism, rather than a polished consumer product.
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Can you still buy Actobotics parts?
Giertz’s video description names Actobotics, the building system used for the project. ServoCity now describes Actobotics as a ball-bearing-based precision building system manufactured from 2013 to 2023 and says it has been discontinued. The company says some staple items, including bearings and shafting, remain available in imperial dimensions for compatibility with existing components. Its research and development team has shifted to the metric-based goBILDA system.
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That does not mean the complete original system is still available, or that goBILDA components automatically fit an Actobotics build. Anyone trying to recreate the feeder would need to check dimensions and compatibility component by component; the published accounts do not identify every part used in the helmet.
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