LEWISTON — Local teens performed the Elastic Watermelon Challenge last summer and a video of their attempt was aired Sunday night on “America’s Funniest Videos.”
Logan Morin and Luke DeCoster, 13-year-old students at Lewiston Middle School, got together with a few neighborhood friends to wrap over 1,000 rubber bands around the middle of a watermelon on July 6, 2015.
“Our first attempt was a dud,” Morin said. “It popped overnight — it hit the house and there was melon all over the screen door.”
And no one was there to see it.
So the adventurous crew tried again the next afternoon with success.
“It took 1,157 rubber bands” and about an hour to place them all on correctly, Morin said. “It has to be even and close together, or it won’t work.”
The goal is to make the watermelon explode simply by strapping the bands around it. The pressure contracts the fruit in the middle until it pops in half.
The local teens’ video aired Sunday night and, according to Morin, they only found out the day before. They had been notified in November 2015, however, that the video had been chosen and all the people shown in the clip had to sign a release form. They were not told when it would actually air, though.
The notice also said all teens seen in the clip would receive “America’s Funniest Videos” T-shirts.
The idea came to Morin after seeing a Challenge America segment on an old episode of the show that asked people around the country to try the Watermelon Challenge, videotape the result and submit it for a chance to be shown on national television.
“We saw it and just decided to do it!” Morin said, laughing.
She said he’s received reaction since the episode aired on TV.
“I posted the video on Facebook and got over 100 likes and a bunch of comments,” she said.
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