May 13, 2026
Wall meets wobble
Nailing jelly to a wall: is it possible? (2005)
Man actually tried it, and the comments immediately turned into jelly chaos
TLDR: A man seriously tested whether jelly can be nailed to a wall, and the internet loved the absurd commitment. Commenters argued over what “jelly” even means, mocked the science-fair energy, and crowned “freeze it first” the simplest fix.
A 2005 internet hero looked at the old saying about “nailing jelly to a wall” and did what the rest of us only joke about: he grabbed a hammer, nails, supermarket jelly, and a plank of wood and ran the test for real. The first round was instantly accused of “cheating” because the solid jelly cubes stuck to the board on their own. So he escalated, mixed up a proper bowl of wobbly dessert jelly exactly by the packet instructions, and treated this gloriously pointless mission with the seriousness of a lab experiment.
But the real entertainment is in the peanut gallery. One camp got weirdly philosophical, with one commenter calmly declaring that whether you can nail something to a wall depends on the properties of the thing—which is the kind of obvious statement that somehow only made the whole saga funnier. Another commenter turned the entire experiment into a science-fair roast, asking how many times a kid could submit these “is this saying physically possible?” projects before teachers realised they were being trolled. Meanwhile, the transatlantic jelly vs Jell-O vs jam confusion kicked off a mini identity crisis, as readers admitted they’d imagined fruit spread, not trembling dessert. And then came the ultimate low-tech hot take: just freeze it first. Honestly? That may be the most brutally practical comment in the thread. Even the copyright note got attention after one reader highlighted the author’s unhinged “anything you wouldn’t mind me doing with your cat” rule, which sent the vibe from quirky experiment to full internet fever dream.
Key Points
- •The article documents a 2005 experiment testing whether jelly can be nailed to a wall.
- •Materials included a hammer, 3-inch wire nails, Hartley's jelly cubes, and a wooden plank used as the wall.
- •The article states that nail length must exceed the depth of the jelly mould so the nail can pass through the jelly into the wall.
- •A first attempt using concentrated jelly cubes succeeded, but the author says this was "cheating" because the cubes were not prepared jelly.
- •The formal procedure used packet instructions to make jelly with 284ml boiling water and 284ml cold water, then pour it into a dessert bowl for testing.