Package Thieves Beware, Mark Rober’s Bait Package Glitter Bomb Will Ruin Your Day

Revenge is a dish best served glittery — at least that’s the lesson you should take away from Mark Rober’s most recent build. Rober had a package stolen from his porch a few months back, and decided to take revenge into his own hands after the police refused to help. The result, as shown in Rober’s latest YouTube video, is probably the most over-engineered bait package ever devised.

That bait package is an elaborate glitter bomb designed to detonate when it’s opened by an unsuspecting thief. But that’s not all it does! It also has two other very important features: first, it releases a potent “fart spray.” Second, and most importantly, it captures everything on video. Four smartphones are mounted inside of the box facing outward to record the thief. Each phone has a data plan and automatically uploads the video while also transmitting its GPS location to Rober, so the package can be recovered.

The centrifugal glitter thrower, the fart spray, and the smartphones are all tied together with a custom designed PCB. The whole contraption fits into an Apple HomePod box that has openings for the cameras, microswitch triggers, and is irresistible to thieves. Despite the box having Kevin McAllister’s name and address — a nod to Home Alone’s genius prankster — several package thieves took the bait. All of them were caught on video, and their reactions are predictably priceless. Sure, it’s an expensive form of revenge, but the satisfaction was obviously worth the cost.

Want to delve deeper into the inner workings of the device? Rober’s collaborator on the project, Sean Hodgins, provides a teardown in the video below.