The problem with Apple’s iPad is that it looks so … delicate. It may be sleek and slim and versatile, but there’s all that screen on the front  just waiting to break if it’s dropped.  Unsurprisingly, the market for protective sleeves has boomed almost as fast as sales for the iPad itself.

To stand above the crowd, a Rhode Island company called G-Formhired some skydivers and asked them to jump out of a plane, carrying a couple of iPads  inside its Extreme Edge and Extreme Portfolio sleeves. At an altitude of 1,300 feet, the parachutists let go of the iPads, hoping they would hit the runway below.

The result? Well, as publicity stunts go, it was a success. The video on YouTube has had half a million hits so far.

“The very first videos we did weren’t meant to sell iPad cases,” said Lily Wray, G-Form’s director of marketing. “We were just trying to show how the technology worked.” The cases, she said, are made with “rate-dependent smart material,” which feels soft if  you touch it gently but is designed to harden in case of real impact.

The company mostly makes athletic gear — knee pads, elbow pads and the like, said Wray — “and we decided, why not apply it to other things?”