Lodi native finds success with YouTube prank videos
Lodi native Jack Vale has made a name for himself as a comedian and YouTube sensation, amassing almost 1.5 million subscribers and more than 300 million views on Youtube with his prank videos.
It all started when Vale created a prank toy called the pooter which makes fart noises.
“That was before I uploaded anything to YouTube,” he said. “I just had this little toy that I created and manufactured and was trying to figure out the best outlet for it, where to sell it and I just kind of knew that every time I left the house I would bring the thing with me and I would use it. I became sort of addicted to it. It was always in my pocket. In line at the post office, at the grocery store, I would always use this thing. I thought well, maybe if I make prank videos of me doing this, it might sell itself.”
Vale started his YouTube channel in 2006 but he didn’t start uploading videos until 2008 after realizing he could use it to market his pooter.
About five videos in he caught the attention of a TV show on NBC that wanted to license one of his videos and the sales of his pooter took off. Before he knew it, he had a couple hundred videos uploaded to YouTube and he began to do other type of prank videos as well.
“Everything that I do is family friendly and that’s always been really important to me because I’m a family man,” he said. “We’re a Christian family. We have five kids, so I just kind of always wanted to create stuff that I wouldn’t have to be embarrassed by and that my kids could be proud of and show their friends.”
Vale said he generates ideas for videos from life experiences.
“I really love making people feel awkward, uncomfortable and just kind of to where they’re questioning the reality of what is going on around them. That’s kind of what I’m good at.”
Vale has always had a love for pranks and aspired to be a professional prankster. Growing up, Vale said one of his influences was actor Leslie Nielsen who starred in movies such as “Naked Gun” and “Airplane.”
“He was always really good at kind of looking dumb, like he wasn’t aware of what was going on around him, and he always kind of pretended to be dumb so that always kind of stuck with me,” Vale said.
He was also influenced by his stepfather, Bill Hosman.
“He is the reason that I ended up going down this path,” Vale said. “I believe that with all my heart because he was just always smiling, always laughing. He was always joking around and trying to be funny or sometimes funny and not trying to be funny, and that impacted me as a kid growing up.”
While Vale tries to keep his videos fun and lighthearted and most people seem to enjoy them, there a few time his pranks didn’t elicit a positive response.
“There’s been a couple of times where even these lighthearted pranks would make somebody upset because they were having a bad day, but it’s really few and far between. I have a thousand videos on YouTube now and I think there is only two or three that have ever ended badly.”
One guy felt that Vale used the fart toy too close to his wife and punched him in the middle of Target.
“That was like five years ago and on that same exact gag every other time I did it, it would always create laughter,” Vale said.
Now Vale has an additional YouTube channel in addition to his main channel and is branching out to Facebook.
In 2015, Vale landed his own reality show on HLN, a sister channel of CNN, called Jack Vale Offline which follows him creating, planning, executing, editing, and posting prank videos in Las Vegas with the help of his family.
“It was really fun,” he said. “My whole family is involved in this. This is a family business so my older kids will film for me and sometimes I’d put the younger ones in the video. My wife has been in a number of videos. We did it for one season it was great. It did fantastic for the network and was a hit by their standards .”
The show did so well that they were given a second season, until the production company that produced the show filed for bankruptcy and the network pulled the plug.
Prior to landing his own reality show, Vale was a part of Dick Clark Productions’ revamping of Bloopers and Practical Jokes hosted by Dean Cain.
“I got to do all of the hidden camera segments for that show, which was a blast, so I co-produced and starred in all of the pranks,” Vale said.
Vale has also made appearances on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Lopez Tonight, The View, Fox and Friends, CNBC and The Doctors. He recently sold a scripted pilot to Fox with a well known producer. In addition to that, Vale has another prank show in the works that will be filming in Northern California. He is even thinking about filming some of the scenes in either Lodi or Acampo. Vale is also getting ready to produce and star in a movie with a few well known actors. He is unable to divulge all of the details of his projects at this time.
Vale was born and raised in the Lodi/Stockton area. He recently moved to Roseville with his family to be closer to his mother, who resides in Galt, after living in Huntington Beach for five years.
He and his wife Sherry have five children: Jacob, Chris, Madysyn, Jaxon and Jazmyn.
Vale is not the only star in his family; his 15-year-old daughter, Madysyn, recently starred in Lifetime’s The Pop Game, a reality show where five teens accompanied by their parents or mangers vie for a recording contract with Grammy Award winner Timbaland’s record label Mosely Music Group. During the course of the show, the teens were able to work with several producers, writers and guest artists including Macy Gray, Nelly Furtado and Jordin Sparks.
“It was fun watching Madysyn and Sherry go through that whole thing and all of that but it was really hard because in almost 20 years of marriage I don’t think I have ever been apart from Sherry for that long,” he said. “Her and Madysyn had to live in this house for almost six weeks.”
Madysyn had previously recorded her first single on the family’s reality show.