What is "kerplunk"

interj. A thudding or thunking sound. n. A thudding or thunking sound. vb. To make a thudding or thunking sound.

Kerplunk may refer to:

• Kerplunk (album), an album by Green Day
• KerPlunk (game), a game of physical skill involving marbles and rods in a cylinder
• KerPlunk, a nickname given to the sculpture B of the Bang
• Kerplunk experiment, a famous experiment of psychology conducted by John Watson

Kerplunk is the second studio album by the American punk rock band Green Day, released on January 17, 1992 by Lookout Records. Kerplunk was Green Day's last release on the Lookout Records label, and was also the first album to feature Tré Cool on drums. After debuting the album to their fans in the Berkeley, California area and receiving much approval from the critical 924 Gilman Street crowd, the band packed up in a cramped, converted Book Mobile and headed east. The band developed a fan base on the east coast behind the touring support of grassroots promotor, Jak Werz. The risk paid off as album sales reached over 50,000 copies. Along with the albums sales and the successful live shows, major labels took notice of Kerplunk's phenomenal popularity, as a result, many approached the band. Green Day realized that they had outgrown their record distribution capacity with Lookout! and eventually signed with Reprise Records. With Reprise, Green Day recorded and released their next album Dookie (1994). The album officially includes only 12 tracks, but the versions released on CD and cassette also include the 4 tracks from the Sweet Children EP. One of those tracks is a cover of The Who's " My Generation".

In August 2005, Green Day pulled the album, as well as all of their other material released through the Lookout! label due to unpaid royalties. It was reissued on CD by Reprise Records, who Green Day has been with since leaving Lookout!, on January 9, 2007. In Europe, the album was released by Epitaph Europe, and has remained in print. It was reissued on vinyl on March 24, 2009 by Reprise Records and includes a reissue of the Sweet Children EP. There were no official singles released from the album, although "2000 Light Years Away" and "Christie Road" were released as mock-up singles in a Green Day singles box set entitled Green Day: Ultimate Collectors. As of November 2013, Kerplunk has sold more than 1,000,000 copies in the United States and more than 4,000,000 copies worldwide. The album has gone on to be among the best selling independently released albums of all time.

KerPlunk is a children's game first marketed by the Ideal Toy Company in 1967. The game consists of a transparent plastic tube, plastic rods called straws (normally numbering 26 to 30 in total and of various colours – yellow and red predominantly) and several dozen marbles. The base contains four separate numbered trays and the straws are passed through holes in the middle of the tube to form a lattice. The marbles are then placed in the top of the tube and held in place by the lattice. The onomatopoeic name of the game derives from the sound of the marbles tumbling to the base of the tube during play.

At the start of play, the entire tube is rotated so that a hole in the base of the tube is aligned with the active player's tray. Players take turns removing a single straw from the tube while trying to minimize the number of marbles that fall through the web and into their tray. Once a player has committed themselves to a particular straw by touching it, they must remove it. The player who accumulates the fewest dropped marbles wins.

The game is manufactured and marketed by the Milton Bradley Company in the UK and by Mattel in the USA. The modern version of the game uses a pink or blue tube rather than the original purple-colored tube. There are also other versions of it, such as a Toy Story-inspired version that uses a tube shaped like a rocket ship and Little Green Men figures instead of marbles. In addition, the KerPlunk Game to Go features a collapsible tube, making it more portable than the standard version. Another game has also been released known as KerPlunk 2. The rules are the same, except the marbles that come with the game are colored and, after falling, move around a spiral pathway similar to that of a gumball machine. It also has flashing lights and an assortment of sounds.