Kendall stood dripping in confetti, strawberry yogurt, and mud when the grand prize was finally revealed: a fully-automated, industrial-grade human car wash built specifically to clean a dirt-covered kid in record-breaking time. It turns out that surviving three rounds of organized chaos earns you more than bragging rights. Mark Rober and the CrunchLabs engineers had been quietly constructing something they called the kid wash, and Kendall had just won the right to be the first human through it.
The whole mess began with a simple premise: two teams, three increasingly chaotic games, and one very unusual prize waiting on the other side of the backyard. Team MC Hammers, made up of Cody and Mark, faced off against a team whose name took considerably longer to settle on. Bam and Kendall eventually landed on Pa La La La La, chosen, as Bam explained, because they were wearing pink.
Blindfolds, mud pits, and a game called Flying Squirrels
Round one was a blindfolded food-guessing relay where teammates described mystery foods they could taste but not see. The MC Hammers got through macaroni and cheese, rainbow cake, and whipped cream in two minutes and 59 seconds. Bam and Kendall had to beat that time, and they were moving fast until the final food stumped them completely. Bam tasted it, circled around it, and with ten seconds left was still nowhere near chocolate pudding. Time expired, and round one went to the MC Hammers.
Round two dropped the two younger players directly into pools of swamp mud, blindfolded, to dig out five Phat Gus plushies and throw them to teammates who would then launch the plushies into what the hosts kept calling a squirrel house despite the absence of any tree. The game went back and forth until Pa La La La La pulled ahead and closed it out, tying the overall match at one round each.
The decider was a trivia and bucket game. One player from each team raced to grab a stuffed Gus mascot when they knew the answer, then chose one of seven buckets to dump over a teammate’s head. Six buckets held liquids and substances ranging from yogurt to something that turned out to be strawberry smoothie. One held gold confetti, which meant an instant win. Answers flew fast: the closest star is the sun, the force pulling objects toward the ground is gravity, insects have six legs, scientists use a microscope to view microscopic objects. Bam was so confident in her final bucket choice that she told Mark he could stand under the other one. She was right. The gold confetti fell, and Pa La La La La won.
Eight nozzles, ten soap dispensers, and one conveyor belt powered by a person on a bike
With the games settled, the winning prize came into focus. Mark explained that he combined the CrunchLabs toy engineers with the engineers at Frida to build what he described as ‘your morning routine in one simple step.’ The kid wash runs on a conveyor belt powered by a CrunchLabs engineer riding a bike. A pre-rinse stage uses eight pressurized nozzles, followed by ten whipped body wash dispensers that cover the rider in soap, then a final rinse before passing through what the team called tornado alley, where a face towel handles the drying. A Prove-It Light turns red when the cycle is complete, indicating the rider is clean enough to face the day.
Kendall went through it first, goggled up and moving on the belt while confetti rinsed off and the whipped body wash did its work. She came out clean. Cody, being kid-sized, also got a turn. Mark, who designed the whole thing, did not fit.
Mark Rober put it plainly at the end: ‘Really should have thought of this.’
The Prove-It Light, still glowing red
The Prove-It Light at the end of the kid wash track sat turned red after Kendall’s run, its single job done.
Being the gracious winner she was, Kendall let Cody take the second ride through her brand-new kid wash. The machine worked exactly as engineered. It just only fits kids. And Bam.
