A Guinness World Record-breaking giant hairdryer, designed by children and built by South Yorkshire-based organisation Kids Invent Stuff, has been unveiled at Huddersfield Town’s Accu Stadium.
The fully working hairdryer measures 1.7556 metres long and 1.6 metres tall – nearly seven times the size of a standard household model. The feat has earned Sheffield inventor Ruth Amos, co-founder of Kids Invent Stuff, a new Guinness World Record title alongside a double-page spread in the newly published Guinness World Records 2027 book.
The project began as a competition run by Kids Invent Stuff in partnership with Honley-based component distributor Accu and the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. Children aged 4 to 11 across the UK and overseas were invited to submit ideas worthy of a world record, attracting over 5,000 entries.
The winning concept was submitted by two young inventors, Kiki and Thea. Engineers scaled up a standard 25 cm hair dryer by 6.88 times, designing the internal mechanisms from scratch. Inside, a motor-driven fan forces air past oven heating elements through steel ducting, enclosed by an outer shell made of expanding foam, filler, and fibreglass resin finished in glossy purple paint. The device was tested on a volunteer in a hair salon before final testing at Accu’s warehouse.
Honley-based distributor Accu supplied all precision fixings for the build, including stainless steel washers, rivets, self-drilling screws, domed nyloc nuts, and socket countersunk screws.
“Every fastener in the build had an important job to do, and it’s brilliant to see our precision components helping to turn these young peoples’ idea into a world record,” said Alastair Morris, Managing Director of Accu.
Ruth Amos added: “There was no rulebook for this one. We had to work everything out from first principles, and that’s exactly what engineering is about: imagination, problem-solving and making ideas real. I hope it inspires every child who sees it to think, ‘I could build something amazing too.'”
The full build story is featured on the Kids Invent Stuff YouTube channel, with further details on Accu available at accu.co.uk.
