In less than 20 hours, Caterpillar Inc.’s new “jumbo Jenga™” video gathered more than 166,000 views on YouTube and generated a flood of fan email.
The two-minute video, titled "Stack," pits five Cat machines, including Excavators and Telehandlers, against a mountain of massive wood blocks weighing more than 8 tons in total. The object of the game: remove blocks one at a time, replacing each of the 600-pound blocks to raise the tower’s height without toppling it. What ensues as the cameras roll is a show of operator skill, and machine power, strength and agility.
Initially offered exclusively through media partner Cygnus Business Media, the video positions Caterpillar as a problem solver with a sense of humor and theater.
Viewers posted messages on Caterpillar’s YouTube page, as well as via email to Cygnus, including these comments:
“My 12-year-old son watched the video with me and he immediately recognized it as Jenga. We have played this game several times. Judging from his reaction, I am sure that this will go viral.” - Dean
“Coolest video EVER of the CAT machines playing JENGA!! LOVE it!!” - Brenda
“Wow, we have excavators and skid steers and we haven’t played that game yet! LOL” - Preston
“Must have had great operators.” - Doug
Production Facts
Production facts provide a behind-the-scenes look at how the video was created.
1. The arena used as the stage for the challenge was larger than two regulation-size NFL football fields.
2. So the blocks would “slide” out of their slots more fluidly, the crew sprinkled all of them with the same wax used on a shuffleboard table to allow game pucks to slide. In fact, they purchased every can of shuffleboard wax within a 40-mile radius of the film set—72 cans in all.
3. To capture all of the action, the crew positioned two of the 12 Go Pro cameras on the ground, fully expecting both of them to sustain substantial damage. Remarkably, the 600-pound blocks missed falling directly on them, though one block came within less than an inch.
4. The game took approximately 28 hours to play and was edited to the 2.5-minute video.
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