Kirby celebrated 20 years with a unique event at PAX – setting a world record for the most bubble gum bubbles blown simultaneously. To say it was an interesting even to watch would be an understatement.
Before PAX, someone alerted me to the fact that there was going to be a world record attempt associated with Kirby’s 20th Anniversary and knowing that I do work for Twin Galaxies International and verifying world records on video games for Guinness, they thought I might be interested in attending. I definitely was.
Saturday morning I went searching for the Nintendo booth to get more information about the event. While I knew it was going to be on Saturday between 2 and 3 p.m., I didn’t have an exact location or much other information about it. The staff at the Nintendo booth were great and gave me a flyer telling me when it was going to be and everything I needed to know.
What I hadn’t calculated is like most popular panels, people started lining up for this event an hour before the check-in time even started. Unfortunately for me, I decided to get lunch, then head over around 1:30 to hear that the line was more than full. Apparently, the turnout surprised Nintendo as well, with one of the comments made that they weren’t sure people were even going to show up and were shocked to see a line formed at Noon.
The first few hundred in line received a gift bag with a limited Kirby T-Shirt, poster, stress ball and some other goodies. Everyone in line (and a lot of people who got the shirts then left) were supposed to put the shirts on while standing in line so there would be a sea of pink Kirby’s blowing bubbles. Soon enough they ran out of shirts and all they had left was gum, posters and stress balls.
The videos below (in numerical order) show scenes from the floor where the event took place.
In the end, the original world record was shattered and out of 600 participants in the event, 536 people blew bubbles simultaneously. Way to go PAX participants!
Enjoy the videos below, which include a Kirby Trivia session, the Guinness World Record Attempt and general scenes of the crowd.
I leave you with a final tip: If you want to participate in any event that may even have the inkling it would be popular, show up early. It’s a valuable lesson I learned the hard way.