Here's a Peek Under the Plastic of Natural Light's Record-Breaking Water Slide

If all goes according to plan today, a bit of history (both the sporting and the marketing kind) will be made on a grassy slope in Davis, West Virginia. Preparation has been going on for weeks—a mix of public relations, event planning and no small amount of physical engineering. After all, when a company sets out to build the world’s longest plastic water slide, there’s no room for screwups. The company is Natural Light, the 44-year-old low-cal sibling to Budweiser. Searching for a suitable tie-in to its limited-edition patriotic cans, this “American-style light lager” has committed itself to a consummately American stunt: It’s not only going to send semi-clothed people screaming down a wet and slippery slope for the July Fourth weekend, but it also aims to set a world record in the process. “Slip-and-slides do feel like a pastime that Americans have loved for generations,” Anheuser-Busch’s vp of U.S. core and value brands Daniel Blake told Adweek earlier this week. Plus, he added, “When we say that the longest plastic slide record was actually held by a foreign country, we felt compelled to act.” Alas, this shameful fact is true. A trio of Jordanian businesses took the Guinness Book laurels six years ago when it built a plastic water slide in Amman measuring 2,006 feet, 10 inches. For good measure, the slide stretched out at West Virginia’s Canaan Valley Resort right now is 2,021 feet. Another for the record books Brands have aimed to set and break various world records for decades now. It’s a time-honored tactic that checks off all the marketing department’s requisite boxes: humor, human interest, good photo ops and a high likelihood of free media coverage. Eleven years ago, for example, the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino smashed a world record 1,914 guitars. In 2016, Doritos took the world record for highest-altitude Super Bowl party by hoisting 20 people 137 feet into the air on a crane. A few months later, Mike’s Hard Lemonade set a world record for most candles on a cake by lighting up 51,151 of them. It’s all good clean fun—but in the case of this event, things are also a little complicated. Harmless as they seem, plastic water slides actually have a perilous history, and Natural Light has gone to considerable lengths to assure that only a record, not vertebrae, is what gets broken today. Fun with the garden hose It was a California upholsterer named Robert Carrier who inadvertently invented the first plastic water slide in 1960 after rolling out a strip of Naugahyde on his driveway. Carrier simply wet the strip down and let the neighborhood kids figure out the rest. Carrier sold his invention to the Wham-O toy company, which made some modifications (plastic replaced the costlier vinyl, for one) and put the product on store shelves in 1961. Its name was the Slip ’N Slide. Almost immediately, the company had a hit on its hands. At $9.95—which is nearly $90 in today’s money—the toy returned a nice margin, and little wonder: It was durable, fun and easy to use. Parents simply unspooled the 30-foot-long ribbon of plastic on the lawn, hooked up the garden hose to the "irrigating duct," and let the kids at it. Even on a shallow slope, the youngsters could achieve considerable ground velocity. Natural Light built its water slide to promote its limited-edition patriotic cans, shown here. Grown-ups ruin everything Unfortunately, the kids weren’t the only ones who took a shot at the Slip ’N Slide. As quickly became frighteningly evident, while children (being lightweight and somewhat rubbery) could easily slide without getting hurt, adults proved far less durable. As the Consumer Product Safety Commission later noted: “Because of their weight and height, adults and teenagers who dive onto the water slide may hit and abruptly stop in such a way that could cause permanent spinal cord injury, resulting in quadriplegia or paraplegia. The slider's forward momentum drives the body into the neck and compresses the spinal cord.” According to the government report, between 1973 and 1991, seven adults and one adolescent suffered neck injuries after using the slide. A custom-made slip For the record, Natural Light’s plastic water slide is not a Slip ’N Slide—and it has nothing to do with the Wham-O brand. But the toy’s mixed legacy is well known to A-B, which has taken precautions accordingly. While the water slide at Canaan Valley has been built on an incline (better for speed) and is aimed at adults (you had to be at least 21 to enter the sweepstakes to be the first person down), Blake stresses that the slide is about as safe as a human projectile apparatus can be. “We have a team of engineers building this slide to ensure that all safety precautions are met and will be doing extensive testing on the slide before opening to the public,” Blake said. “People of all sizes will be able to go down, and each will be going down on an inflatable tube, which will help propel them down and serve as a bumper for safety. We’ll be spacing folks out and in complete control of the slide. Also, the slope itself allows people to go down the slide unassisted, without reaching speeds that are dangerous.” Perhaps most important: While there will be plenty of Natural Light beer around, it will not be served until all the slipping and sliding is done with. “There will be Natural Light provided to 21+ fans,” Black said, but “only after they have gone down the slide—not before or during.” Natural Light’s $470 Million Art Installation Is a Commentary on the Student Debt Crisis