Lundell Plastics Designed, Built Base for World’s Largest Popcorn Ball Project
06-16-16
Article written by Deb Loger, Ida County Courier
Organizers are busy with last minute details for making the World’s Largest Popcorn Ball, this Saturday, June 18, at Noble Popcorn in Sac City.
Sac County has held the Guinness World Record for the largest popcorn ball three times starting in April 1995 when the first record popcorn ball was built weighing 2,225 pounds. In September 1995 that record was beat so in June 2014 a new ball was made weighing 3,100 pounds. On Feb. 28, 2009, the county’s third largest popcorn ball was built weighing 5,000 pounds. In 2013, the Indiana State Fair took over the title with a 7,500-pound popcorn ball.
A lot of work goes into making a record size popcorn ball including a base for the popcorn ball, a special pallet to haul it and a new building. Lundell Plastics of Odebolt has prepared the base for the record popcorn ball.
Vance Lundell owner of Lundell Plastics said, “Shirley Phillips stopped in one day looking for a plastic base or to see if we could build one. I said yes not knowing the project was way bigger than we anticipated.”
Lundell Plastics product engineer Matt Roeder said, “I designed the mold using a CADD program plus extra calculations on my part. It probably took four to five hours to design the mold. The goal is to hold 12,000 pounds of popcorn.”
Roeder said the base is made of 3/8-inch plastic with one-inch supports. It measures 12-feet across the inside, took 2,000 pounds of plastic and 1,000-feet of plastic weld to create. Approximately 150 manhours were spent in building the base.
Rhonda Lines from Noble Popcorn said Evapco made a special pallet to haul the base to Sac City and American Concrete poured and donated the cement for the pad. Lundell Plastics has ordered polycarbonate, a special glare resistant plastic, for three sides of the building that will house the popcorn ball.
According to Noble Popcorn, the process to put the popcorn ball together will begin about 6 a.m. and probably take all day. They estimate they will be ready for helpers to start making the popcorn ball around 8:30 to 9 a.m.
If you want to help with the making of the popcorn ball, Noble Popcorn staff suggest you wear an old pair of comfortable shoes that you don’t mind having popcorn stuck to the bottom. They also suggest people have rubber gloves to bring to wear while helping.
