Awesome Rube Goldberg

Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers features a contraption that slides Wallace out of his bed, downstairs to the kitchen, into his clothes, then fixes him some toast and jam. Joseph’s Machines thought it would be fun to reenact the sequence in real life, but as his video reveals, it took a lot of prep, trial, and error to get everything to work just right.

Got dirty hands? You could wash them in the sink, or you could go with an unnecessarily complicated machine instead. Joseph’s Machines built this contraption that subjects its users (victims?) to a handwashing regimen. It starts by dunking hands in water, lathering them with soap, scrubbing, then rinsing and drying them automatically.

Because Steve Price can’t be trusted to roast marshmallows, the Sprice Machines host built a complicated chain reaction machine to do the work for him. The camping-themed Rube Goldberg contraption starts with a toy car rolling down a hill and ends with a marshmallow spinning above a heat gun. Now he just needs to expand it to make S’mores.

What’s the laziest way to grill hot dogs? If you’re Pablo Rochat, you send them there on a Hot Wheels track on a tiny wienermobile. Like any good overengineered solution, he could have grilled 100 hot dogs in the time it took him to set up the track. Turns out this isn’t the first time Pablo played with his wieners.

The latest Rube Goldberg contraption from Joseph’s Machines helps its inventor get up and going for the day. After waking him with an alarm clock to the face, it pours a cup of coffee down his throat, turns on the lights, and subjects him to what is basically a car wash for humans. It even puts Joe’s clothes on for him. Pee-Wee Herman would have been so proud.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream. But instead of just opening the freezer and digging into the container with a spoon, Sprice Machines spent four months building his most complicated Rube Goldberg machine yet. The machine winds through his entire house to serve a single scoop of ice cream with toppings.

Sirgabealot G teamed up with 14 other talented machine builders teamed up to create this 9-minute sequence of chain reaction machines. In all, there are 31 amazing contraptions to watch, incorporating ramps, tracks, turntables, ferris wheels, pool balls, and more.

Because he can’t be bothered to feed himself anymore, Joseph of Joseph’s Machines built a conveyor belt to deliver his breakfast. We’re not just talking food rolling along the line, but a series of individual machines designed to stuff food and pour drinks into his mouth. The behind-the-scenes video is great too.

Because tossing a few things into a picnic basket is just too ordinary, Sprice Machines decided it was time for some innovation in the area of outdoor dining. So Steve and his team got to work building a remarkably complicated Rube Goldberg machine that takes care of carrying the basket and taking care of everything except the ants.

Setting up a Rube Goldberg machine and getting it to all work perfectly can be quite difficult. Filmmaker Tomohiro Okazaki took a different approach to making their machine, building an impossible chain-reaction sequence using stop-motion animation.

We’ve seen plenty of Rube Goldberg machines, but this one holds the Guinness World Record for the largest one to date. Chevrolet Menlo, Wang Xiqi, and Guan Jian built the complicated contraption, which takes 427 steps to turn a light on. We’re not sure if it’s physically the largest, but it’s the most complicated we’ve seen.

While you could just order in, some of us enjoy homemade pizza. Why make your pizza by hand, when you can have a machine make it for you? IDEAS EN 5 AÑOS built this over-engineered Rube Goldberg machine that evenly distributees the sauce, cheese, and toppings onto spinning pizza dough. Too bad it can’t cook it too.

Over on Etsy, you can find a variety of bottle openers that have a Plinko-style drop mechanism. But Thompson Woodworks built the best version we’ve seen, combining the bottle opener with a Skittles dispenser that triggers only if you land your bottle cap in the proper tray at the bottom.

Because absolutely nobody asked for it, The Critters created a Rube Goldberg machine that plays the main theme from Jurassic Park using precisely placed rubber chickens and bowling balls. Yes, we know they almost certainly did it with CGI, but it’s still hilariously weird.

Rube Goldberg machine creator Joseph’s Machines came up with the best way to make pizza ever. The clever invention uses a model railroad engine to spin the pizza, while various other mechanisms layer on the ingredients. Now he just needs to figure out a way to move it into the oven.

It’s nice to be able to work from home, but it’s easy to get distracted too. Sprice Machines came up with a solution – a silly Rube Goldberg contraption that’s designed to keeps him focused on the task at hand. Or is it a Productivity Killer Machine?