About

Japanese Foil Ball Challenge refers to a trend on YouTube in which people take balls of aluminum foil and through several steps and some extra materials turn it into a shiny sphere. Since spreading in Japan in March of 2018, the trend became popular among American YouTubers, with several videos of the challenge gaining millions of views.

Origin

The first video to feature the challenge was posted by Japanese YouTuber SkyTOMO on March 7th, 2018, gaining 43,000 views (shown below). In the video, SkyTOMO takes a ball of aluminum foil and hits it with a hammer until it is nearly perfectly round. He then uses sandpaper on the edges to make the ball smooth. He then applied mirror polish to make the ball appear shiny.

Spread

On March 10th, three days after his first upload, SkyTOMO uploaded a second video demonstrating how to make the ball (shown below, left). This video went viral, gaining over 3.9 million views thanks to a shoutout from popular Japanese YouTuber HikakinTV, who attempted to make the ball in a March 27th, 2018 video that gained over 9.5 million views (shown below, right).

In the meantime, the trend spread through Japanese social media, giving the foil ball challenge a reputation as a Japanese trend. After HikakinTV's video, many more YouTubers in english-speaking countries started attempting to make the ball in videos on their channel. Some early examples include an April 1st, 2018 video by Rehan Natalwala that gained over 50,000 views (shown below, left) and a video by Mr Norbit from April 2nd that gained over 17,000 views (shown below, right).

Over the course of the next two weeks, several major channels showed the trick, with many gaining millions of views. The Action Lab posted a video in which they made the ball and then submitted it to a Hydraulic Press, gaining over 16 million views (shown below, left). Buzzfeed posted a video featuring a woman performing the challenge, gaining over 7.3 million views (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest