PYM Test Kitchen (location)

> "*Shrinking Problems Growing Solutions*"
> ― Slogan
>
>

The **PYM Test Kitchen** originally known as **PYM Labs** is the setting for the restaurant of the same name in Disney California Adventure's Avengers Campus.

## Description

The PYM Test Kitchen is a former laboratory turned experimental kitchen, located in *Avengers Campus California*. The Test Kitchen is run by the California science and technology company, PYM Technologies. The kitchen serves the primary purpose of experimenting with Pym Particles on food, growing it to larger proportions while shrinking to ship higher quantities of food and produce less waste. Many aspects of decor and technology used within the kitchen are enlarged items belonging to Ant-Man and the Wasp.

Food within the Test Kitchen is often served with scientific paraphernalia such as test-tubes and scientific documents. On occasion, the kitchen would sell foods of alien or quantum origin.

### Features

#### Exterior

* **Patio**: The Test Kitchen has a patio dining area outdoors, lit by enlarged Christmas lights.
* **PYM Tasting Lab**: The Pym Tasting Lab is an outdoor booth made for serving experimental alcoholic beverages. In the centre of this booth is an enlarged can of, "Silver Age" beer, brewed in New Asgard.

#### Interior

* **Counter Room**: The main room within the Test Kitchen where food is ordered and served. Hanging from the ceiling in this chamber are various screen menus, along with a hanging conveyor system which brings pretzels into a machine to be enlarged or shrunken. The room is decorated by various photographs and informative plaques which explain the history of PYM tech and the Test Kitchen's mission.
* **Drink & Condiments Station**: Off to the side of the counter room is a small room with a pair of digital drink-machines, supplied by enlarged soda-cans suspended from the ceiling. There are also stations for condiments, supplied by enlarged bottles of ketchup and mustard.
* **Kitchen**: Behind the main dining area is a large laboratory/kitchen. Among other features, this chamber held various large dispensers of PYM Particles, super-hero gear used by the Wasp, and a tank, "Key-chain" belonging to Hank Pym. This kitchen also had large metal doors connecting to the utilidoors stretching out below Avengers Campus.

## History

### Background

#### Stark Industrial Complex

The PYM Test Kitchen was set to be built in the early 1950s as part of the *Stark Industrial Complex*. The lab was run by Hank Pym, the founder of Pym Technologies who doubled as the super-hero, "Ant-Man".

#### Avengers Campus

Starting in the late August of 2019, the Stark Industrial Complex was transformed by the late-Howard's son Tony into, "Avengers Campus". This change was part of his, "Global Avengers Initiative", motivated from an attack on the Stark Expo in Hong Kong by the Nazi organization HYDRA which he was assisted in fighting off by Hank Pym's daughter and business successor Hope "The Wasp" van Dyne, along with Pym's successor to the Ant-Man mantle, Scott Lang, The new Ant-Man and the Wasp were amongst the superheroes involved with the campus. Scott's daughter Cassie was a member of the *Worldwide Engineering Brigade* present on the campus and came up with an idea to use it to reduce food-waste and maximize food production to make a more sustainable food system.

Following years of PYM Tech hiatus, Janet announced this using an enlarged paper from his desk, reading:

"*After a multi-year hiatus, Pym Technologies is proud to join the Avengers Campus to re-establish our operations and share our revolutionary "Pym Particles" technology with the public.*

*When my father, Dr. Hank Pym, first discovered Pym Particles- particles that can shrink any object to the size of an insect or grow it to gigantic scale- he created suits so the heroes known as Ant-Man and the Wasp could use Pym Particles to become the perfect size for any mission. But that was just the beginning...*

*From sustainable shipping to recycling programs to innovations in food sciences and miniaturized farming, Pym Technologies is on a mission to find new ways of using Pym Particles to help the world"*

After the restaurant opened, various super-heroes such as Black Widow, Captain America and Dr. Bruce Banner would eat from the kitchen. The kitchen also frequently served the many recruits attending Avengers Campus.

#### Web-Slingers

Cassie Lang was developing a project presentation around the time of the W.E.B. open house that Peter Parker used to demo the, "Web Slinger" vehicles, and was set to present after him. Cassie was excited about this presentation and texted Hope at the Test Kitchen asking her to attend, as well as to make sure that her father arrived on time. However, Peter Parker shifted what was supposed to be a Web Slinger team-project to showcasing his personal-project the, "Spider-Bots" who subsequently ran amok throughout Avengers Campus with the threat to destroy it. Peter then recruited attendees of the Open House to leave through the utilidoors and help him stop all the robots, presumably resulting in Cassie's presentation being ruined or cancelled.

Various Spider-Bots travelled to the Pym Test Kitchen where they ran-amok and caused mass amounts of damage. Spider-Man fought them while assisted by various super-hero recruits riding the Web Slinger vehicles. In this incident, they fought a giant Spider-Bot which was enlarged by Pym Particles and knocked it down some chute where it was damaged but escaped. Much of the Pym Test Kitchen was left in ruin with destroyed and damaged technology due to Peter's actions.

Following this incident, Hope was furious with Peter who spam texted her multiple apology texts, promising he'd send more Spider-Bots to help clean up while pleading she not tell Tony Stark. After the Open House incident, Cassie asked Hope if she could bring W.E.B. friends to the PYM Test Kitchen while promising Peter was not amongst them.

#### Later history

When *Guardians of the Galaxy* members Star-Lord and Gamora were captured by the Collector and trapped in his fortress, they attempted texting Wasp to no response as she was using her cell-phone as a digital menu at the time. Tony Stark also attempted to text Wasp asking where they were to the same response.

Due to the success of the PYM Test Kitchen, Tony Stark contacted Wasp about making a, "PYM Kitchen" successor in *Avengers Campus Paris*. At some point, the kitchen temporarily sold cauldrons of, "Ooze" excreted by the organism Veb of the Quantum Realm who Ant-Man was allies with.

The kitchen would also temporarily serve foods of alien origin such as, "Orloni on a Stick", " Zarg-Bits", "Experiment 1517: Cardamom & Caramel Churro Cold Brew" and, "Milky Fixx".

## Appearances

### Avengers Campus (DCA)

The Pym Test Kitchen is noted on a map of the Stark complex as "Pym Labs".

#### PYM Test Kitchen

The Test Kitchen is setting of this attraction.

#### Web Slingers: A Spider-Man Adventure

One of the stages in this attraction is set in the kitchen. The blueprints of the old Stark Complex identify it as, "Pym Labs".

## Trivia

* Ironically, as Pym Particles are not real the Walt Disney Company produces higher quantities of food-waste due to this restaurant's enlarged food gimmick.
* In both the comics and the films, applying PYM Particles to food and drink would be problematic due to prolonged exposure to them sometimes causing insanity in their users.
* Artwork on the wall depicts Ant-Man fighting the HYDRA robots of Arnim Zola as he does in the attraction Ant-Man and The Wasp: Nano Battle! in Hong Kong Disneyland.
* The giant ketchup and mustard bottle come from, "Bountiful Valley Farm". This is a tribute to the Bountiful Valley Farm area of *Disney California Adventure* which Avengers Campus took up space of.. The year of establishment is also 2001, when the park was made.
* The, "Silver Age" beer can from a company established in 1956 is a reference to the Silver age of comics, the period of comics where Marvel gained popularity and made many of its most memorable characters. The can also mentions the company coming from New Asgard, and that it is, "Chitauri Charged", referencing the fictional location of New Asgard as well as the alien Chitauri from Marvel's Ultimate comics who appeared in the first *Avengers* movie.
* One of the giant soda cans is *Pingo Doce*, a fictional soda company which Bruce Banner worked for while in hiding and accidentally contaminated with his gamma irradiated blood.
* The giant Christmas-lights are repurposed from the gates of *A Bug's Land*.
* The tank which turns from small to giant is an item from the movie *Ant-Man* (2015) where it belonged to Hank Pym. Wasp's flight harness also appears.
* Inside of the test kitchen are enlarged, "Harbulary Batteries". In Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2, this is was what Drax the Destroyer mistakenly refers the Sovereign's Anulax batteries as.
* A bread-tag in *Pym Test Kitchen* labelled 06APR references Paul Rudd's birthday, of April 6th while another has Evangeline Lily's birthday 03AUG or August 3rd.
* The name of the, "X-Periment" in the Pym Tasting Lab might be a reference to the X-Men.
* There is a giant, "Choco-Smash" chocolate bar outside of the kitchen, referencing the Incredible Hulk. The barcode on the back reads, "60101964", referencing Tales to Astonish #60 (October, 1964) which featured the Hulk, Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne's wasp.

## References

1. ↑ https://dlnewstoday.com/2019/08/photos-a-closer-look-at-avengers-campus-projects-coming-to-disney-parks-at-d23-expo-2019/
2. ↑ https://www.laughingplace.com/w/news/2021/06/04/marvel-character-text-messages-at-avengers-campus/
3. ↑ https://www.disneybymark.com/2021/06/photos-do-you-recognize-these-13-hidden-easter-eggs-in-disneys-avengers-campus/
4. ↑ https://insidethemagic.net/2021/06/avengers-campus-a-bugs-land-rwb1/
5. ↑ https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2021/06/02/photos-first-look-inside-pym-test-kitchen-at-disneylands-avengers-campus/