Tune into Food Network’s Unwrapped to get a peek inside the Spangler Science labs as Steve shares the science behind the Mentos Geyser all of that exploding soda. Back in December, I mentioned that a crew from Unwrapped on the Food Network wanted to get the real scoop on the popular Mentos and soda reaction. The crew spent an entire day grabbing the reaction from every angle and trying to understand how all of those tiny bubbles produce such a huge fountain of soda. The episode is scheduled to air on September 24, 2007. Consult your local listing for time and channel.

Popularity: 97% [?]

Dropping a roll of Mentos into a bottle of soda used to be something that kids did for fun. Now adults are getting into the act. I opened my e-mail and received these cool pictures from the organizers of the event that took place on July 10th in Flower Mound, TX. Representatives from the Guinness World Records certified the record-setting effort, which went off at 6:30 pm inside the Circle R Ranch Rodeo Arena where 850 independent sales representatives from Books Are Fun, a Reader’s Digest Company, simultaneously dropped Mentos into 850 two-liter bottles of soda using the Geyser Tube Toy. The previous Mentos geyser record was set on May 24, 2007 in Cincinnati, Ohio when 504 Mentos-and-Coke geysers were set off.

Watch the Video: The Largest Number of Simultaneous Mentos GeysersÂ

Please remember that you’re looking at 850 screaming adults… not kids… running away. Yes, learning is fun for people of all ages.

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Thousands of science teachers found their way to St. Louis for the 2007 National Science Teachers Association convention, and we wanted to make sure they had something to take back to their students. So, we loaded our trucks with experiments and products from the website along with 5,000 rolls of MENTOS stuffed into plastic test tubes and headed for the Gateway City. We were fortunate to have 14 teacher ambassadors from the Hands-on Science Institute join us in the booth to each share their favorite science activities. Aside from 500 bottles of Diet Coke and a mountain of MENTOS, all eyes were on the 18 foot tall soda eruption chamber. We were demonstrating the new Geyser Tube by triggering a MENTOS geyser as fast as we could set-up a launch (about every 2-3 minutes for 3 full days). At the end of the convention, the soda was gone, the rolls of MENTOS were in the hands of 5,000 teachers, the truck was cleaned out… and we all had a blast. It’s back to the classroom for the 14 ambassadors to start working on cool stuff for next year’s NSTA in Boston.

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We’re excited about the official launch of our new Spangler Geyser Tube. Think of it as the perfect Mentos loading device to trigger a 30 foot geyser of soda. Just load the Mentos candies into the tube, lock the nozzle in place and pull the pin. Okay, it’s bes

t to pull the pin and then run away. The Mentos drop into the bottle triggering the reaction and the powerful soda geyser comes shooting out the top with enough pressure to reach an incredible height of 30 feet. Onlookers scream, “Do it again!”… and you do.

The Geyser Tube retails for $4.95 and is currently only available at www.SteveSpanglerScience.com However, as a result of our licensing agreement with the maker of Mentos (Perfetti Van Melle), the Spangler Geyser Tube will be released into mass market distribution (all of the major toy stores, print catalogs and online stores) in June 2007.

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I’ve always been a fan of Apple Computers (now Apple Inc.). From my very first Apple IIe to my current MacBook Pro (and about a dozen in between), these computers and products have helped me and our employees to do some very amazing things over the years. That’s why it was an honor to be invited to visit Apple last week and speak with a group of their employees about my experiences running our business on a Mac platform. During my visit, we also taped some online seminars that will be posted on apple.com/business in the near future.

Okay, the secret is out… we’ve been in business for 16 years and never had a PC in the office. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Mentos Geyser made history once again as the star attraction at the NAEYC 2006 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Over the rumble of the crowd in the exhibit hall, you could hear someone from the Spangler Science booth yell, “GEYSER!” followed by a few screams and cheers of excitement. The “geyser” was actually the eruption of a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke powered by Mentos. As soon as people approached the booth and saw the mountain of soda and the display of Mentos, they knew what could happen… but most people didn’t believe that we would actually launch the geysers from behind the booth. Surprise!

Instead of just launching the Diet Coke just for fun sake, we used each opportunity to deliver a quick science lesson and followed it up by putting one of our Geyser Tube Experiments in each of the teacher’s hands. Out of the 11,000 people reported to be in attendance at the event, we personally handed out 7,000 Geyser Tube Experiments (which included a roll of Mentos). We even had a few guest “geyserists” take center stage in the booth and try their hand at a launch.

This is not the first time these educators had seen or performed our Mentos Geyser which was featured on stage three years ago in Anaheim, California at the 2003 NAEYC Conference. One teacher commented, “We’ve been doing this experiment for the past three years, and it took the rest of the world this long to catch up!”

Read the rest of this entry »

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In addition to being the Business Columnist for the Denver Post, Al Lewis is now a fan of the Mentos and soda mixture. Al called last week with questions about our recent license agreement with with Italian confectioner Perfetti Van Melle, the maker of Mentos. His column entitled Mentos-Soda Mix a Mint for Scientist looks at the business side of the popular Mentos Geyser. He asked lots of questions about things other than my work on the Mentos experiment. He wanted to know about my background, my teaching and my parents.

“Let me get this straight,” I said to Spangler. “Your father was a scientist and a magician. David Copperfield hung out at your house. You are now 39 years old. And getting a pop bottle to squirt 20 feet in the air is the best trick you know?”

“This isn’t the best trick,” he said. “It’s the trick that got the most notoriety.”

Al also wanted to learn how this science experiment turned into a viral marketing sensation with the Mentos video that aired on 9NEWS in September of 2005.

Al asked me if teachers are really doing this experiment and how they’re turning it into a learning experience. Share your Mentos Geyser experiment with Al Lewis on his blog.

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The recent article in the Wall Street Journal reported that the marketing gurus at the Coca-Cola Company are not all that excited about the pop culture phenomenon. “It’s an entertaining phenomenon,” said Coke spokeswoman Susan McDermott. “We would hope people want to drink (Diet Coke) more than try experiments with it.” According to the article, Coke could use some extra buzz right now. Sales volume of Diet Coke in the U.S. was essentially flat last year, as consumers switch from diet sodas to bottled water and other noncarbonated drinks. But McDermott says that the “craziness with Mentos … doesn’t fit with the brand personality” of Diet Coke.

If the truth be known, both Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke work much better than generic sodas. In the original video posted on 9News.com, both name brand diet sodas were used just so we wouldn’t get in trouble by favoring one over the other. But when VH1 included the video on the second episode of Web Junk 20, the bloggers started calling it the “Diet Coke-Mentos Experiment”.

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In a recent phone interview with a newspaper reporter, I speculated that the makers of Mentos, Perfetti Van Melle, were distancing themselves from the Mentos phenomenon. This was based on our numerous attempts to reach the marketing gurus at Perfetti Van Melle, starting back in January of 2006. Well, based on the article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the folks at Mentos are “tickled pink” by the online buzz.

The popularity of the videos - Mentos says it has found some 800 online - is producing a gusher of free publicity for the candy maker, a unit of Italian confectioner Perfetti Van Melle. “We are tickled pink by it,” says Pete Healy, vice president of marketing for the company’s U.S. division. The company spends less than $20 million on U.S. advertising annually. He estimates the value of online buzz to be “over $10 million.”

Our goal in contacting Healy was to share the “buzz” that started back in 2001 when thousands of teachers started doing the science demo in their classrooms as a way to teach some cool science concepts. Over the past five years we’ve collected hundreds of emails with variations from teachers and students. Hopefully, we’ll get a chance to share some of the history of the Mentos phenomenon with the marketing people at Perfetti Van Melle. Read the rest of this entry »

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