Well, I guess we can officially say that Simmotion is a fan-favorite challenge considering 41% of those who participated in the voting for Survivor 50: In the Hands of the Fans chose it. But personally, this has always been one of my favorite challenges considering it’s one of the only challenges that truly epitomizes “outwit, outplay, outlast.”
The strategy needed to properly time out multiple balls moving at the same time alongside the physical nature of the challenge’s need for sharp reflexes and the fact that it’s the last player standing at the last challenge of the season who wins, just makes it the perfect metaphor for Survivor.
And if you watched the Survivor 50 finale, you learned a little bit of its history when host and executive producer Jeff Probst talked about production designer Simon “Simmo” Ross creating a smaller scale machine on his own time during Survivor: China. The challenge team loved it and went on to enlarge it, add some rules, and thus “Simmotion” was born.
The first time the challenge appeared in the game was back in season 18, Survivor: Tocantins. Since then it’s been featured in nine more seasons, though not always as the final immunity challenge. In Survivor: South Pacific, it was used as a Redemption Island duel challenge while in Survivor: Ghost Island, a variation of this challenge—called “Always on the Run”—was created for a team reward challenge.
But over the years, the original challenge didn’t change much except for the addition of tying an arm behind the players’ backs so they could only use one hand to grab the falling balls. They also adjusted the number of balls that could be added with the first season kicking off with eight potential balls, shortly after going down to seven, and then eventually six for some seasons.
With such a steadfast challenge, it’s no surprise that the winner of this challenge ended up going on to win the title of Sole Survivor 62% of the time:
- J.T. Thomas (Survivor: Tocantins)
- Jeremy Collins (Survivor: Cambodia)
- Nick Wilson (Survivor: David vs. Goliath)
- Natalie Anderson (Survivor: Winners at War)
- Romeo Escobar (Survivor 42)
- Heidi Legares-Greenblatt (Survivor 44)
- Kyle Fraser (Survivor 48)
- Aubry Bracco (Survivor 50: In the Hands of the Fans)
And while the theme of the Survivor 50 was redemption from past mistakes, this challenge wasn’t one of the places that happened as Jonathan Young and Joe Hunter are the only two players in Survivor history to face this challenge twice. They lost both times and Joe actually lost both times to the eventual winner of the season.
So, basically, if you have hopes of one day winning Survivor, you should do what Aubry Bracco did and order a version of the challenge online to practice at home. In fact, it seems people already might be mimicking the Survivor 50 winner’s strategy as the morning after the finale, searches for “Simmotion” on Etsy went from literally 0 to 11.2k.
In fact, the small business shopping site has a slew of Survivor-related challenges. I myself may have been gifted a small version of the standing fire puzzle at some point in the last few years. So if you see me on the show and I dominate that puzzle…now you know why.
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