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The idea for this year's pumpkin prank came from a recent bachelor party for ZUG patron saint Ned Rhinelander. We were camping in Maine, an entire truckload of smelly guys, when a fellow named Doug Cals pulled out a long white tube. "It's a potato cannon," he explained. "I built it just for this occasion."
As he stuffed a ripe potato down its thick neck, he showed us how it worked. The gun is made of ordinary PVC tubing, available at any hardware store; the fuel is a flammable solvent such as Glade air freshener. And then he demonstrated it. With a tremendous FOOM!, the potato shot several hundred feet into the air. I immediately realized that launching a potato at high speeds is one of the funniest things in the world, particularly when you have had between four and eight beers.
For the rest of the night, we had endless fun launching potatoes at sundry targets. When we ran out of potatoes, we used muffins, snack cakes, and other assorted foodstuffs. When we ran out of food, we shot flaming paper. I thank God there were no children or midgets nearby, because we would have tried to launch them also.
For these videos, we decided to take things one step further: we used the potato cannon to blow up jack-o-lanterns, calling the resulting vegetable a "potat-o-lantern." As you watch the videos, keep in mind that the sound of the potato cannon is slowed down, but otherwise unaltered.
We hope these videos will provide hours of enjoyment for you and your loved ones during this holiday season.
Plans for building your own potato cannon can be found here.
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