YouTube is home to all kinds of videos featuring the wanton destruction of everyday objects, often shown in slow motion and with dramatic music to enhance the viewing pleasure for those who enjoy that kind of thing.
Among the most famous of these efforts is the Will It Blend? series where Blendtec founder and CEO Tom Dickson continues to drop all manner of newly launched gadgets into his machines to discover their blendability, or, more to the point, to show off the power of his blenders. This one stars the Apple Watch.
It’s a clever marketing routine, which, over the last 12 years, has earned Dickson’s channel more than 880,000 subscribers and 280 million views.
Other efforts, however, seem less concerned with marketing and are more focused on simply having a bit of fun with some heavy machinery.
Take the Hydraulic Press Channel, for example. The Finland-based effort has been up and running for the past couple of years and has built up a fan base of people who enjoy watching the channel’s hydraulic press — complete with a blade attached — destroy a wide variety of objects.
The latest effort landed on the site over the weekend. It shows the press tearing through 10 packs of playing cards, and the fact that it has already picked up more than 400,000 views suggest many people are finding the card-splitting spectacle really rather pleasing.
Using a freshly sharpened tool positioned very precisely over the tightly packed cards, the operator speculates it has a 50 percent chance of destroying all of the playing cards in one go, with a high risk of some of them flying away unscathed as the blade descends.
Hitting the button to set the machine in motion, the press takes just seven seconds to do its business, sending 1,040 card pieces all over the workshop with satisfying “clicks” as each card snaps in two.
Re-running it in slow motion and with an operatic soundtrack, the destruction becomes a piece of compelling cinematic art, though we don’t think it’s at the Oscar-nomination stage just yet.
Continue watching and you’ll be treated to the intriguing sight of the press splitting apart a ball of colored rubber bands, and also the explosive response of a CO2 inflator when it’s pierced by the blade.
Check out the channel to see how the hydraulic press handles a bunch of other items, but, as its creator wisely advises, “do not try this at home … or anywhere else.” Just in case you happen to have a blade-equipped hydraulic press hanging around.
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