This is too upsetting to keep to myself, so I must ruin it for you as well: Last night on Discovery's MythBusters, they proved that the pressure of a massive amount of popcorn popping is not enough to blow out the windows of your home as seen in the 1985 film Real Genius. Busted! Two consolations: They did prove that a laser can pop popcorn (which drew applause from Kari Byron and me). Confirmed! And they did blow up a small-scale house filled with popcorn with explosives, which you can watch in high speed here.
If the show's already gone after the ice skating scene, I don't want to know about it.
More MythBusters:
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MythBusters' 100th episode Q&A
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I know, I cried last night. I knew the movie was loosely based on real events at a California school, I just sorta hoped secretly that the popcorn scene was too. I feel like I just lost a little bit of my childhood there.
This just made my day even more gloomy than it already is! How sad. . .
Love that show
I’m pretending I didn’t just read this.
Suddenly, I just want to crawl back to bed… stupid Mythbusters!
I am keeping my delusions, mythbusters be dammed. I will choose to believe that the workers on that particular house so hated Prof. Hathaway that it was very shoddily constructed, therefore allowing the popcorn-pressure to destroy it. There was probably an imperfection in the glazing allowing for window breakage, too. And that popcorn looked kinda yellow, meaning that whatever chemicals Ick used may have eaten through and weakened things as well. Yes, yes. The popcorn did blow up that house.
Adan, good one.
That house was under contruction. One could presume the foundation was probably already weakened due to it not being completed. So the popcorn ball could very likely destroy it when it started popping.
But regardless, never really though it was real in the first place but always loved that movie and I will continue to. It’s on my list of 80’s cult favorites with Troop Beverly Hills and Girls Just Want to Have Fun. I have all the DVDs. So regardless; I’ll always treasure that scene in “Real Genius”.
The pure revenge was pure fun.
One of my fave 80’s flicks, too. What ever happened to those actors (other than Val Kilmer, William Atherton & Jon Gries)?