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Wild Video Shows Retro Grizzly Bear Protection Suit Being Tested

It’s an absolutely epic video clip that periodically goes viral online time and time again. The grainy, retro footage shows what appears to be some sort of man or robot decked out in a suit or armor. That armor is being put to the test too. The figure in the video gets blasted in the face with a board, then two boards. Then gets rammed by a boulder on a rope a few times. Then he tumbles down a steep precipice a couple of times. Finally, he gets absolutely annihilated by a pickup truck. Surprisingly though, it’s not a clip from MTV’s hit show Jackass. It’s actually a grizzly bear protection suit being tested back in 1996.

Context for the video is never provided beyond the fact that it is apparently footage of a grizzly bear protection suit being tested though. But fortunately, the Hamilton Spectator did a little digging. They shared more details about who is in the suit and what the heck is going on in the whacky video.

The Legend Of The Grizzly Bear Suit Guy Lives On Thanks To The Internet

The internet had yet to take over the world by 1996. But the video of the bear suit guy is so outlandish that the internet has given it a second life and made it go viral several times in recent years. The video has introduced the hilarious Canadian man’s wild antics to a new generation. The footage is just as funny today as it was back in the 90s. The star of the show is a man named Troy Hurtubise.

The video clip is from a documentary titled Project Grizzly. The news outlet from the man in the video’s hometown described the viral scene with amazing eloquence. It describes “a heavily armored Hurtubise, who gets pummelled with planks of wood, kicked down the escarpment, hit by flying logs, and smashed into by a pickup truck. It’s the sort of misplaced bravado and unnecessary violence Twitter loves.”

The article also goes on to explain the infamously viral video was actually the most action the suit ever saw. Although it was Hurtubise’s lifelong dream to test the suit in a battle against a real grizzly, that never came to fruition. Not sure if that’s good news or bad news for Huburtise. Who knows if the suit would have held up as strongly to a real-life grizzly bear as it did to the tests in the video? The world will never know. Hubertise tragically died in a car crash in 2018, however, his legacy lives on forever thanks to the internet and the whacky viral video he helped create. His legacy is also carried on by the full-length Project Grizzly film.

More Details On The 1996 Project Grizzly Documentary

The entire documentary is based around Hurtubise’s obsession with researching grizzly bears. An obsession that started with a close encounter he had with a grizzly back in 1984. Hurtubise is also described as a “scrap metal merchant” in the film. So it makes sense he uses those skills to source the materials and create the makeshift bear protection suit. His design for the suit was reportedly inspired by the movie Robocop.

Apparently, the suit wound up costing him a total of $150,000 to develop. The documentary details the rigorous series of tests seen in the viral video in more depth too. The documentary ends with Hurtubise venturing off into the Canadian Rockies looking for a live bear to test the suit out with.

However, the movie ends before he finds a bear to wrestle. Though a somewhat disappointing conclusion, the film has an optimistic final scene as the director notes that the quest to test the suit against the bear lives on.