In this video I make a machine that can shoot an M&M in your mouth. It does take a bit of practice, but it’s pretty cool to eat M&M’s from mid-air!

To get it all working properly it is important to get the M&M’s to shoot fairly consistent. Because this is quite hard for a device like this M&M launcher I decided to test some concepts first, before I made the video. The concept with the lever as I made it in the video looked the most promising so I went with that. To reduce the variables even more I used ball bearings and a proper axle so the lever would hit at the same spot every time.

Making the barrel from aluminium instead of wood helped to reduce the friction on the M&M and thus improving the consistency. The next step was to make a frame to hold the bearings, the motor that pulls the lever back and the barrel. I made this frame from some scraps of plywood I had left over from earlier projects.

After one M&M is shot the machine automatically reloads. To do this I made a slider with an M&M sized hole in it that slides in and out of the hopper that holds all the M&M’s. Every time after the shot the slider drops a new one in the barrel.

Of course it has to look pretty so the last step was to make a nice housing for it and spray paint it in the colours of the M&M’s in the commercials.

Check out the video to see it all!