Hey, guys!
I just got a package from Ian and Shayne from Smosh.
They are my good friends.
You guys know that I've collabed with Smosh a bunch over the years.
"You've been selected to take part in YouTube's Great Gift Exchange."
And there's a URL.
I'm a bit concerned to put this into my phone.
All right. Let's see what we got.
Hey, y'all. I'm Alton DuLaney,
the world's most famous gift wrap artist,
and YouTube's wrapresentative, giftlomat, presenter.
That is not what I expected.
You have been selected to be a part of YouTube's Great Gift Exhange...
where you and 11 other creators will participate in a chain of charitable gift giving.
You will each be assigned a creator,
and as a gift, each of you will make a donation
to a charity that is important to your recipient.
Then you will be whisked away to my magical Wrapshop.
[LAUGHS] Okay.
Magic. Where I'll teach you how to gift wrap the creator's donation in a thoughtful way.
[CHUCKLING] Where did they find this guy?
All right, let's open this thing. [GRUNTS]
This is awesome! Look at how good I look.
They really captured my je ne sais quoi.
You and me together, friends.
This is a legitimately, really well done
pizza made of paper.
They sent me this bedazzled version of my 8-bit character, too, MatPat.
Look! Look how beautiful that is.
So, I'm assuming this pizza slice has something to do with it.
Oh, okay. Happy holidays.
Smosh has made a charitable donation to No Kid Hungry in your name.
That's so sweet.
One thing that people tend to forget about
is not only are schools, like, largely not in session,
but schools don't just provide education for people,
but they provide social services,
including meals for underprivileged families.
What No Kid Hungry does, which is so incredible,
is that they provide the ability
for those schools to keep giving meals,
even during the hard times like 2020 has been.
Shockingly thoughtful from Team Smosh over there.
But it seems like there might be something else here.
So, I'm assuming this is like a parmesan shaker.
[CLICKING]
Oh! It's a black light. Yes!
There're secret messages inside. Okay, let's do this.
"You're dumb." "More like suck theory."
Oh, and they drew a poop. Thanks, guys.
I'm so glad that you donated to charity in my name,
but also a human turd.
"MatPat's a dumb loser."
This is the Smosh that I know.
But, I guess, now it's time to keep rolling with the video, so, Alton!
Without further ado... [YELPS]
I took years of modern dance.
Let's find out who your lucky giftcipient is.
What!
Oh, come on.
Your official giftcipient is the musical mastermind,
Kurt Hugo Schneider!
Hey! That's awesome. I love Kurt.
Kurt and I received our ten-million subscriber button at the same time.
So, we go, you know, we go way back.
I'll see you at the Wrapshop. Enjoy the train ride. Choo-choo!
Just like some sort of magical train.
[IN SING-SONG VOICE] Magical, magical, magical transition!
[TRAIN HORN BLOWING]
[LAUGHS] Hang on, Alton, I'm coming for ya.
In the meantime, this candy isn't gonna crush itself.
NARRATOR:
to Alton's Wrapshop went the steam-powered sled.
I'm really looking forward to working with Matt and Pat today.
[PRODUCER SPEAKING]
I'm really looking forward to working with MatPat today.
Not only is he charming, I really do admire
MatPat's ability to analyze video games
in an accessible and entertaining way.
There's so many buttons on this thing,
I can't even pretend I know what I'm doing.
[TRAIN HORN BLOWING]
Ah! Saved by the train.
That must be MatPat.
Well, MatPat, welcome to the Wrapshop!
Thanks for having me here.
-How was the train ride? -Teeny.
It's fuel efficient that way.
Tell me a little bit about your recipient, Kurt Hugo Schneider.
Yeah! Absolutely.
He's actually an O.G. YouTuber.
He's this incredible musician, who takes the art of music
and applies it to the world around him.
-Amazing. -I do know that Kurt is really into puzzles
-and puzzle solving. -Okay.
MATT:
So, I'd love in my gift wrap to incorporate something
that he has to kind of figure out
in order to get to the gift inside.
-We love shenanigans here. Sure. -Great, I have so many ideas.
Experiences like these make amazing gifts.
They cost almost no money. It's just a little extra time,
and yet, really can be much more fun and more memorable
than the actual gift itself.
Because sometimes, when it comes to gift wrapping,
it really is more about the journey than the destination.
MatPat, I know you're a "gamer."
[LAUGHING] I love the use of heavy quotes.
Is this offensive, "the gamer," or that's funny?
-I think it's funny. -Okay.
-I'm really naughty. -[LAUGHS] Sure.
Daddy don't play games.
What is your experience with gift wrap?
I love precision, I love cleanliness,
-but the paper gets thrown away, Alton. -Right.
Why would I waste my time?
Well, the answer to that is it's the magic moment, it's the celebration.
It elevates that exchange from something like, "Here's 20 bucks,
"but here's a gift that I bought for you,
"and then I presented it in this incredible way."
So if we're talking about gift wrapping, right,
when you look at the history of gaming,
you could say that, like, back in the '80s,
there's this conspiracy theory about a bunch of games
all getting wrapped in a New Mexican desert.
-Tell me more. -Oh, I will do so.
In 1983, a man by the name of Howard Scott Warshaw
created what's widely considered to be the worst game in gaming history.
Warshaw was actually a pretty talented game designer
and he gets the call to make a game
dedicated to Steven Spielberg's
Huge opportunity, right?
Things could have worked out just fine,
except there was one problem.
They really wanted him to get the game done for the holiday season,
and that meant one thing, crunch.
He managed to hit his deadline, and according to plan,
the game started to fly off the shelves.
But then people started to play it.
It was terrible. It was nigh-on unplayable.
By April of 1983,
this premier game had dropped from $38 to $7.99.
So, what do you do as Atari?
Suddenly, you're left with thousands of games that can't be sold.
They drove off to the middle of a New Mexican desert,
and buried them in a landfill.
The idea that this treasure trove of unsold video games
became kind of an urban legend,
until 2014, when people actually went out
and found the landfill where they were all buried.
Ironically enough, those games that you couldn't give away back in 1983,
now sell at auction for about 1,500 bucks.
ALTON:
That way, I won't have to bury them in the desert on my way back to Texas.
[CHUCKLING] I don't know. You've never seen me wrap a gift before, Alton.
So, are you ready, MatPat, to level up your gift wrap skills?
I put myself in your hands,
world's most famous gift wrap artist.
-Let's do it. -Let's do it!
BOTH: Yeah!
We can just go and do it if you want, I mean...
I thought they were gonna freeze it. Did they not freeze it?
[TRAIN HORN BLOWING]
ALTON: Actually, Matt, it's over here. This way.
MATT: Never been here before. Go figure.
So, today, we're gonna be wrapping these fun colorful
sketch books with these great markers.
-Okay. -And then, these gifts are
-actually going to children in need. -Oh, so no pressure.
-No pressure at all. -Great.
This quick wrap is what we call the crisscross wrap.
It is already news to me that there's more than one way
-to wrap a present... -[LAUGHS]
...than fold the paper over and stick.
ALTON: So, we're gonna roll out our paper.
-You're gonna have a little overlap at the bottom. -Okay.
And you're gonna cut it just short of the journal.
My mom would always do a fold,
and she wouldn't use scissors. She would actually, like,
physically tear it, like, perforated paper.
And that's a cute look, too, and you get that torn edge, which is nice.
Oh, and look at what a great job you're doing already.
I already tore the paper.
Now, this is the only tricky part of this wrap.
You're gonna go in on the side and tuck in the paper
to create these two triangular flaps.
-How did you do it so cleanly? -See? Lots and lots of practice.
What the heck! Why doesn't the paper do what I want it to do?
-[CHUCKLES] -Let me hold down the book.
-ALTON: Get into it. -Gift wrapping is a full contact sport.
-Okay. Here we go. -ALTON: So, now, we're gonna fold it over...
-MATT: Yes. -...across the book.
-Oh, okay. -And now, we're gonna do top flap on the right,
-same thing. -MATT: I lost my triangle.
My triangle abandoned me.
-Come back, triangle. -Come back. Come back to me.
I'm so nervous! As a control freak,
I'm not used to. like, putting myself into the most vulnerable positions possible.
This is one of the most vulnerable positions possible.
Hey. You're doing so great.
You need to throw a foot up there to hold the other side.
[CHUCKLES] Exactly. Perfect.
-It's not going anywhere. -And we're gonna fold that over
and you can see how we've started to develop this crisscross pattern
on top of it. The paper's crisscrossing back and forth.
Yes. Clearly.
-ALTON: Now you're gonna do the same thing on the right side. -Ooh!
Excellent.
-[EXHALES] -Now, turn it back over.
The great thing about this crisscross wrap
-is it has this great little pocket... -Uh-huh.
...which you can add another gift to.
And I like to call this "putting the present in presentation."
-You can take some of these great markers that we're giving. -Okay.
ALTON: And look, they just shove into the wrap.
I am so sorry, children.
So, now that we have this wrap, which is pure perfection...
-Yes. -...let's add that ribbon on to it.
Let's add that little, uh, belt or belly band.
-All right. You've got your ribbon. -I do.
ALTON: What I do with this particular wrap is then
I just like to give it, like, a couple of three or four wraps.
-You can put those back in when we're done. -Yeah.
ALTON: And then, just kind of knot it off in the front.
This very well may be the best gift wrap ever.
[TRAIN HORN BLOWS]
Now we're gonna move on to our main wrap.
The first part of this wrap is gonna be in this little box,
and we're gonna turn this into a video game cartridge.
Oh, that's great.
I love to get creative with my gift wrapping
and make the gift look like something other than what it is.
Let's transform this gift into a console, a controller,
and a video game cartridge.
Yours is going to contain the actual donation.
With love, you're gonna tuck it in. Yes.
And we're gonna wrap it in gold paper.
Gold paper. This is very reminiscent of what is probably the most special
of video game cartridges ever created,
the original
-which came as a gold cartridge. -Yeah. Hang tight.
[LAUGHS] Hang tight.
I'm just gonna slice and dice this paper.
I swear I can cut things, it's fine.
I like to take the edge of my paper,
and I just fold it over,
so you never tape to the actual box.
-Always tape paper to paper. -Oh!
'Cause when your recipient opens this, you want the paper to just melt away.
[LAUGHS] Yep. That's what I want.
ALTON: And then you're gonna just take your finger and then create these little wings.
The good thing about this is it keeps your package
from sliding around inside the gift wrap.
MATT: No one wants a sliding package.
-Now is when things get interesting. -Okay.
We're gonna do something called pleating.
Fold it over on itself again,
and again, and you're gonna just roll it and fold it.
And I'm just taping them down so they don't unfold later.
Oh, no! [SIGHS]
-[CHUCKLES] What? Tape! -Come on, tape.
MATT: Oh, look at that beauty.
-ALTON: Excellent. -All right.
I've never seen a better pleat before in my life.
And there's your video cartridge.
-Oh, my gosh. This is great. -ALTON: Ta-da!
Reminds me of my childhood.
Even the best cartridge is really no good without...
The console to play it on, it's true.
So, we're gonna start with this box
and we are going to build our own plastic console.
Great! Sounds fantastic.
So, we're gonna stick glue, actually, on the lid of the box.
-Whoa! -[CLICKS TONGUE]
We're putting an adhesive on the box itself?
Rules are meant to be broken.
Glue sticks, man.
I always like the smell of them.
Do glue sticks have a smell?
[BOTH SNIFFING]
-This one maybe doesn't. -[CHUCKLES]
-So, that's our console box. -Yeah.
-And now we're gonna create our logo. -Oh!
And this, my friend, is, you're gonna love this,
a circle cutter.
Oh, geez. I thought this would be much simpler than it is.
-There you go. Nice! -ALTON: Ta-da!
Look at me! I'm MatHat.
And in honor of Kurt,
I thought that calling it the Kurtendo would be a cute name for it.
I love it!
We've got our very super-cute cartridge, a little duo gift.
Ooh!
[NARRATOR READING]
And here we are with the final product.
We've got our cartridge inside,
we've created this great console.
And then we've taken all those puzzles and I worked them into this cute controller.
We couldn't show the actual making of the controller,
'cause that would spoil the surprise.
I don't want Kurt Hugo Schneider seeing this video early.
You're just gonna have to tune into his channel
to see exactly what we have in store for him,
because there's some fun video game Easter eggs
and a couple of codes you might recognize.
I like to think of this as a little escape room in a box.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
Make sure you tune into Kurt Hugo Schneider's channel
and find out the devious puzzles I've put in this box.
It's the grand finale of the Great Gift Exchange.
It's like the final-boss stage.
Wow! I made a "gamer."
-"Gamer..." -Gamer.
-...of you after all. -I threw that in just for you.
I appreciated it. And remember, that's just a wrap.
A gift wrap!
BOTH: Thanks for watching.
-ALTON: First time. -Right? One and done.
NARRATOR:
the puzzle and present steamed away.
[TRAIN HORN BLOWS]
NARRATOR:
Find out in the grand finale!
[CLEARS THROAT]
Today, we have something a little bit different.
I do know this reference. This is
"This famous cheat code."
What is that? "What will you find at the end of
[EXHALING]
If this is not what I'm supposed to do, I must look really dumb. [LAUGHS]
Before I left, there was one final note for me.
"All this holiday cheer doesn't need to end here.
"Choose one more creator for the giving train, and let's start a whole new chain."
I'm gonna sit here and think about it. In the meantime,
you can watch the related episodes.
I'm doing the dance that's enticing you to wanna click on one of those boxes.