The Giant Mouse Trap

Everyone remembers the game Mouse Trap from their childhood, where you create a Rube Goldberg style contraption to trap a mouse. Well some good folks outside of London at The Lamb Pub in Surbiton have created a life sized version.

The description on the video reads : “Over a few pints a group of friends decided it would be a great idea to build a lifesize replica of the Mousetrap game… and here it is – The complete giant Mouse Trap day at the Lamb pub in Surbiton. We raised over £2000 for the Shooting Star childrens hospice… brilliant day…”

From what I can tell, they used a real tub, and then based the scale on the rest of the trap on that tub, thus “life sized”. Of course you would have trouble finding a mouse this big, but maybe they are larger in England. Here is a video of the completed trap:

… and this video shows “the build and play”

Pretty impressive work, however it looks like something similar has been undertaken before :

and for added goodness, here are some old Mouse Trap commercials :

In case you wanted to remember those steps again, Wikipedia has the answer :

In a proper operation, the player turns the crank, which rotates a vertical gear, connected to a horizontal gear. As that gear turns, it pushes an elastic-loaded lever until it snaps back in place, hitting a swinging boot. This causes the boot to kick over a bucket, sending a marble down a zig-zagging incline which feeds into a chute. This leads the marble to hit a vertical pole, at the top of which is an open hand, palm-up, which is supporting a larger ball. The movement of the pole knocks the ball free to fall through a hole in its platform into a bathtub, and then through a hole in the tub onto one end of a seesaw. This catapults a diver on the other end into a tub which is on the same base as the barbed pole supporting the mouse cage. The movement of the tub shakes the cage free from the top of the pole and allows it to fall.

It ALWAYS worked flawlessly didn’t it? But don’t get too excited when it does: