I worked for years on a 4,000 year history of juggling, to be published by my company. The original manuscript ran hundreds of pages and was accompanied by thousands of archival photos. The author was German and had written the text in English. The work was understandably very Eurocentric and, understandably, many jugglers were missing or had sketchy bios that needed fleshing out. The text was badly in need of editing. I, along with others whom I recruited for the task, took it upon ourselves to contact every living juggler of merit to ensure that their entries and photos were as accurate and complete as possible. The book was virtually rewritten over the course of 10 years and, sadly, was never completed.

One of the entries was a man named Fritz Grobe. As was the original author’s style, his entry in the book focused almost exclusively on his juggling talents. However, I was interested in knowing more about the man and his life. I quickly learned that I was not dealing with an ordinary individual at all. Fritz was born into a family of academics – his mother and father were both math professors at Bowdoin College in Maine. Here is what Bill Giduz from the International Jugglers Association wrote in 1993:

As a high school student at Brunswick High, he had the second highest score in North America on the American High School Math Exam, qualifying him for the American Invitational Math Exam. The national average of the 3,700 students invited to take that test was a 3.6. Fritz scored a 10! That qualified him for the 1986 U.S.A. Mathematics Olympiad, the highest honor for a math student in the country. He finished 14th out of the 93 students invited to that trial, a feat he considered his finest hour in the discipline.

Fritz was admitted to Yale University and became involved with the school’s juggling club.  With a bout of mononeucleosis, Fritz went back home to Maine.  He took a few math classes at Bowdoin. He never returned to Yale, instead following his passion for juggling. As a former mathematics major myself who had a brief and harrowing experience at NYU’s Courant Institute, I was a bit jealous of someone so gifted mathematically, yet would toss those talents aside to become a juggler. But, such is life and just as one man’s meat is another man’s poison, one person’s dream is often another person’s boredom.

In 2002, I attended the International Jugglers Convention in Reading, PA. As I crossed the street one evening on the way to the public performance, someone caught my eye who I thought maybe Fritz Grobe. I barked out – “hey, you’re that guy, right?” Absurdly cryptic, but Fritz understood that I was asking if he was the subject of our phone and mail correspondence for the juggling history book. It was he.

Nearly forgotten, I was shocked to run across Fritz completely by accident 5 years later, nearly at my front door in Washington Square Park. He was there for the YouTube gathering on 7/07/07 – his YouTube videos have gone viral with over 60 million views. I was more stunned to learn that he would not be juggling, but that his genius had been redirected to experimentation and exploitation of the Coke and Mentos effect. Unfortunately, I was not to see his act in 2007 – permit problems prevented him from performing.

In 2005, his first experiments were done, as well as the creation of the entertainment company, Eepybird, with his partner Stephen Voltz (an attorney and grad from NYU Law). They have developed nothing short of an operatic theater piece using hundreds of bottles of Diet Coke. The act has won four Webby Awards and have been nominated for two Emmys. They had been featured on TV – David Letterman, The Today Show. Only days after EepyBird released their first video, “The Extreme Diet Coke and Mentos Experiments”, the Wall Street Journal reported that Mentos had already received over $10 million worth of publicity. The video generated a 5-10% spike in the sales of 2 litre bottles of Diet Coke and a 20% spike in U.S. Mentos sales, the biggest sales increase in company history. In the first 9 months, 10,000 copycat videos were posted online.

So, I was surprised but not perplexed to find Eepybird as a featured act at the 2012 World Maker Faire in New York City. I spoke with Fritz briefly while he was setting up for the show. When I returned, I was joined by a massive shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. Fritz and Voltz appear dressed as scientists in lab coats, explain the chemistry of Coke and Mentos, describe the bottle cap technology they developed for optimal geysers, and then the show begins – a well-choreographed and syncopated shower of geysers set to music. I took video and still images overhead in Hail Mary style.*

Eepybird’s act is a roaring success and brings out the child in everyone. They perform the act worldwide, full-time, doing an average of 12 shows per year. But these are not childhood antics nor cheap tricks – a lot of creative thinking has gone into this act. Never underestimate Fritz Grobe. His geysers are merely metaphors for genius gushing forth and fountains of success 🙂

*A Hail Mary is a photo taken blind, without using the viewfinder, typically overhead in a crowded situation. The term “Hail Mary” is used owing to the idea a prayer is needed to get a good photo.