Mark Rober’s studio entrance looks like an ordinary office until you push the Coke machine and the wall swings open. That hidden door, and the labyrinth of inventions it leads into, is where one of YouTube’s most popular creators built a working Willy Wonka factory for engineering, and the first high-profile guest through the secret passage was Jimmy Donaldson, better known as Mr. Beast. What followed was less a formal tour and more a mutual roasting between two people who have collectively planted 20 million trees and pulled 30 million pounds of trash from the ocean, interrupted at several points by genuine, wide-eyed fear.
The entrance is a Coke machine and the hallway is a hall of fame
Getting inside Crunch Labs, as Rober has named the facility, requires a little problem-solving. Guests push the Coke machine to open one hidden entrance, or turn an eagle mounted on the wall to find another. Donaldson, who had accused Rober of faking his famous backyard shed with a green screen, was immediately confronted with evidence to the contrary: a hallway lined with photographs from some of Rober’s most significant YouTube projects, the Team Trees campaign and the Team Seas ocean cleanup among them. The tour moved from the Nerf arsenal to a claw machine sourced from a collaborator named Denise, and then arrived at what Rober calls the fireman.
The fireman is a pneumatic descent device. A person steps off an eight-foot platform, pulls a rope, and the air inside a chamber is forced through a small opening at the top, creating what Rober describes as a traffic jam of pressure that slows the drop to a gentle landing regardless of body weight. Donaldson, who once spent seven days buried alive for a challenge, spent roughly ten minutes at the edge before committing. ‘Turns out the dude who spent seven days buried alive was wimping out over an eight-foot drop,’ Rober noted with some satisfaction.
A briefcase on the wall and $10,000 on the line
Deeper inside sits the Crunch Cave, the production space for Rober’s monthly engineering toy subscription, Crunch Labs. Rober walked Donaldson through several of the toys the team has built: a drawing machine, a wrist-mounted paper airplane launcher, a tightrope walker, and a coin bank rigged with a spider that flips out when the lid is opened. ‘Which grandmas love,’ Rober added.
Behind a secret mirror lies what Rober calls a museum of his YouTube builds. The centerpiece is the automatic bullseye dartboard, a target that moves away when anyone else throws so they cannot hit it, then shifts back into position when its owner steps up so they land a bullseye every time. Donaldson’s reaction: ‘They should sell this for the low price of $150,000.’
The museum also holds a briefcase mounted on the wall. Land a bullseye with it and the prize is $10,000. The rules are specific: as many practice shots as a visitor wants, but only one official attempt, and only after signing the wall. Donaldson signed, shot, and came close. He did not win.
The guest who walked out with the product
When Rober asked Donaldson directly whether he would have wanted a Crunch Labs box as a kid, the answer was immediate: of course. Then, rather than ordering one from the website like everyone else, Donaldson simply picked one up and walked away with it. Rober watched it happen.
‘All right, well, there you go,’ Rober told him. ‘Come here and steal it. That’s the way to go.’
Every month, one Platinum ticket is hidden inside a Crunch Labs box. Whoever finds it gets an invitation to the lab for Nerf battles, arcade games, and, apparently, the opportunity to watch Donaldson spin a coin with his thumb on the underside.
The coin bank with the spider inside sits in the Crunch Cave, waiting for the next month’s build.
