and stole my backpack.

But what they'll soon find out

is that thanks to some high-tech glitter

and fart spray delivery mechanisms,

that's no ordinary backpack.

- [Thief] Ain't nobody (beep) back here, right?

- And this guy's also trying to break into my car,

but what he doesn't realize

is those are bulletproof windows 'cause that's just funny.

(beep)

Every year, 20,000 cars are broken into

in the city of San Francisco,

but who's behind all these break-ins?

Like, is it organized crime, or gangs,

or just random individuals?

And then what happens to all the stuff that they steal?

Well, just like when we used the power of glitter

to infiltrate and shut down

those terrible scam call centers in India,

I'm happy to report that having teamed up

with a veteran investigative reporter,

and gotten our bay car broken into 25 separate occasions

over the past eight months,

we now have a much clearer picture of what's going on,

and even some thoughts on how to stop it.

And as this video is the conclusive finale

to the whole glitter bomb series, this time for reals,

I'm so happy to report that we finally got

some really good reactions to that perfectly harmless,

yet wretchedly abhorrent fart spray,

including one that's not too far off

from Macaulay Caulkin's here.

(Macaulay coughs)

Now, if you haven't seen any

of my other glitter bomb videos,

the 15 second recap is that five years ago,

these two took a package from my porch,

which inspired me to combine my engineering skills

with my Christmas time affinity for Kevin McCallister.

- Yes.

- And that not only led to different versions

of glitter bomb bait packages that would spin,

spray, flash, stick, punch, or fly,

but it eventually led us over to India

where we ended up infiltrating, then shutting down

five of those terrible scam call centers.

But Mark, you object, you said last year

was the final glitter bomb,

and that was true until earlier this year.

I had the unfortunate realization

that glitter and fart spray

hadn't solved all forms of crime worldwide

when my own car was broken into.

I'm missing a window.

Not cool, San Francisco.

Not cool.

That also made me realize

our 11th hour cobbled together car package last year

never got enough footage to uncover

who was actually behind all the San Francisco car break-ins.

So 10 months ago, for one final time,

we completely redesigned the glitter bomb

from the ground up.

Only this time, it would be custom built just for cars.

For starters, instead of using centrifugal force

to fire the glitter, this year we'd be using

900 PSI of compressed gas

because if you take a CO2 bike tire inflator

and attach a pipe to the outlet,

then connect the high torque servo motor

to the opening valve, and then repeat that configuration

and stack them on top of each other,

well then when you load those pipes

with copious amounts of biodegradable glitter and fart spray

and then trigger the servo motors,

that highly compressed CO2 is gonna very quickly

push out anything in the pipe that gets in its way.

At the core, we still have a custom printed circuit board

that will make all the decisions for the device,

in addition to talking to us

via a two-way cellular connection.

Then we slap on a car horn for good measure,

and place that whole compact form factor

into the base of a custom sewn backpack

with external access to the outlet nozzles.

Like in years past, we'll still capture footage

using a pair of phones that get tucked into the sides,

with the added benefit of serving as the backpack GPS

and the speakers for the countdown time.

And once these backpacks are stolen,

they'll of course be on the move all over the place,

and since there's no guarantee we're gonna get 'em back,

for the third year in a row,

we turn to my friends at T-Mobile

to make sure no matter what,

we get the footage from the cloud

given the complete coverage

and crazy speeds of their network

that I've actually gone out and benchmarked myself before.

Finally, we lock up the bottom compartment

to prevent tampering,

then use a rubber stopper glue to a patch

to plug and conceal the outlets.

Then as a decoy to divert suspicion,

we got some clothes and a bunch

of old non-functional laptops to place in each bag.

We also created a second version

with a suitcase form factor and identical guts

in case word got out about the backpacks.

Then the car itself has eight hidden dash cams,

all powered by a 2,000 watt hour

camping battery in the trunk

that also plugs into the backpack with two barrel jacks.

One to keep the entire device

and both phones at 100% charge until stolen,

and the other to serves sort of as a digital trip wire

so the backpack knows exactly when it was stolen

to initiate the stolen bag protocol.

We also served up two more surprises this year

by first creating a bait car

with impossible to break polycarbonate windows,

which is the same stuff bulletproof glass is made of.

That car also has the added benefit

of a microphone in the trunk

for detecting when someone's trying to break the window,

which will of course release the air in this tank,

triggering this pneumatic piston

with a special surprise on the end.

And as a final idea, we took an actual gaming laptop,

removed the extra fan, and in its place,

added a GPS tracker that would continuously stay charged

by using the laptop battery.

That way we'd always know where it was,

even if they wiped the hard drive.

The thought here was to put that laptop in a backpack

to actually get stolen with no glitter involved,

and then with the help of Dan Noyes,

who spent 30 years as the chief investigative journalist

for the San Francisco ABC7 news team,

we could trace the laptop's footsteps

to try and get some answers.

So after a couple of months

of designing, testing, and building,

we put them out in a few different cars, and we waited,

and we didn't have to wait long.

But before I subject you

to gratuitous amounts of broken glass,

I'm gonna start off with a little broken glass of my own.

Three, two, one.

(glass shatters)

Nice shot, Eloise.

I'm Mark Rober, and for over a decade,

I've been making YouTube videos to showcase what it means

to think like an engineer.

But what exactly does that mean?

You ready?

(liquid explodes)

(liquid splatters)

Whoa.

Thoughts?

- Probably less catalyst.

- Good call.

It means you know failure's part of the process.

It's how you learn, and thinking this way

makes you a better soccer player, or piano practicer

because you're resilient and you keep tweaking and trying

until you get it right.

Or, you can just come up with a totally different solution.

(piano playing rapidly)

Because if you think like an engineer,

you think differently,

and that unlocks creative new ways to have fun,

and that's exactly why I created CrunchLabs,

where you get a super fun toy

that gets delivered to your porch every month.

- Thanks, Mark Rober.

- You're gonna love that one, Sarah.

See you next month.

And then you put it together with me

as I teach you all the juicy physics that make 'em work.

So if you wanna train your brain,

to see the world in a whole new light

while having a ton of fun at the same time.

(liquids exploding)

Just go to CrunchLabs.com right now and reserve yours.

You nailed it, Gabe.

Outta the gate, it was pretty clear

if our goal was to find out

who was behind all these car break-ins,

they were gonna do everything in their power

to not be found out.

(glass shatters)

But the advantage of teaming up

with an 18 time Emmy award-winning investigative journalist,

is that when one of our eight cameras

catches these guys nearly causing an accident,

we can play it back so Dan can run their license plate,

which must be precisely why

they'd removed their license plate.

Thankfully, on our third break-in, our luck improved.

And this time, we struck pay dirt

because once Dan ran the license plate,

he made a shocking discovery.

Turns out, this car belonged to a longtime

SF State College professor who also sits on the board

of a prestigious Oakland Charter School,

and so like any good investigative journalist,

Dan found his home address and showed up to confront him,

except he turned out to be a really nice guy who informed us

that his license plate was stolen from his car

a few weeks prior.

And what Dan would eventually learn

on nearly all the other license plates

he would run over the course of our operation,

is that not only do the thieves commonly drive around

with stolen license plates.

- [Thief] We got Georgia plates.

- [Mark] But they tend to steal

from a similar color and model as their own vehicle

to avoid an obvious mismatch.

So the car thieves showed that they could handle our cameras

and investigative techniques, but now the question was

how would they handle a little bit of harmless glitter?

Spoiler alert, not very well.

- [Thief] A safe?

(beep) this ain't no (beep) safe.

This is like a bomb or something.

- [Thief] That looks like a tracker, yo.

Oh, it's on.

Oh, that's a tracker, T.

Come on, T.

Y'all see that's a tracker.

Throw that (beep) dude.

- [T] I'm trying to, man.

- [Thief] Dumb (beep), throw that (beep) out right here.

- [Automated Voice] Five, four, three, two.

(glass shatters)

- [Mark] Notice how the first thing he does

is check the trunk by pulling down the seat,

trying to unsuccessfully steal our strapped down battery.

This is pretty common for them to do,

and it's why leaving valuables in your trunk

isn't really a great option.

(fart spray whirring)

- [Automated Voice] 14, 13, 12.

- [Mark] In the end, he changes his mind,

not just about our backpack, but our laptop too.

- [Automated Voice] Five, four, three, two.

- [Mark] This next one is truly

one of my favorite reactions ever

because one of the guys proves

there actually is honor among thieves

as he takes the full blame for the fart spray stench.

And I'm just gonna let the tape roll