YouTube Legend ‘The Microwave Show’ Powers Down After 300 Eps

If you’ve been around YouTube for any of the past four years, there’s a very good chance that you’ve seen or heard of the series called,Is It a Good Idea to Microwave This? The show, created by Jonathan Paula, Jory Caron and Riley McIlwain (all members of Ideo Productions) is a simple concept: microwave hundreds of various items to see what happens. And often that concept produces entertaining – not to mention explosive – videos.

A mix of science, comedy and curiosity created the first episode of The Microwave Show back on July 1st, 2007. In that first video (embedded below) Jory Caron places a lightbulb in a microwave after having seen the same thing done online. The bulb unexpectedly breaks, leading Caron and Paula to realize that they could microwave all sorts of objects for the viewers at home. Four years later, the series finale shows Caron, Paula, McIlwain and guest-star Ryan Lewis as they go out with a bang. Not only does the team microwave a propane canister and fireworks, they also douse the entire structure with gasoline, and then proceed to shoot the propane tank with a rifle.

To say that Is It a Good Idea to Microwave This? is an establishment on YouTube would be an understatement. With over twenty hours worth of video in the ten seasons of 300 total experiments, a following of over 500,000 subscribers and more than 100 million total video views, the crew has created a show that will keep living on well past today’s series finale. We wish the team well on their future online video endeavors, and will leave you with their most-viewed experiment ever: Is It a Good Idea to Microwave an Airbag?

Co-creator Jon Paula explains in his own words why the show is coming to an end in its current format: