BUCKFIELD – Even after 40 million views online – and countless TV and live performances around the world as the Diet Coke and Mentos guys – Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz are better known for their white coats and goggles than for their faces.

Neither man has ever been stopped on the street to sign an autograph or pose for a photo with a fan.

“It keeps us focused on having fun and doing more work,” said Grobe, who lives in Buckfield. “It’s a nice anonymity.”

That may be changing.

On Friday night, the duo will premiere their most ambitious performance yet, a video that will be televised nationally on cable’s ABC Family network during the debut of “Samurai Girl.” It will simultaneously roll out on their Web site, EepyBird.com.

And this one will show their faces.

“I guess it works,” Voltz said of their appearance, minus their trademark lab coats and goggles. “We look different enough as people, this big, bald guy and this short, hairy guy.”

Rather than triggering intricate fountains of sugar-free soda, the guys will be making waterfalls and wheels with sticky notes.

The final three-minute video – produced in Hollywood and sponsored by 3M, Office Max and Coca-Cola – represents more than a year of work by the pair.

Demand for a new act had been building since their first video debuted in 2006 and became an instant Internet phenomenon.

“We put the video online on a Saturday in June,” Grobe said. “On Monday morning, ‘The Late Show with David Letterman’ called. It was that fast.”

The whirlwind has continued. The first award-winning video, “Experiment #137,” led to live performances all over North America and Europe, sending them as far away as Turkey. The pair were featured in music videos for Weezer and Barenaked Ladies.

“We couldn’t do anything the first several months because we were going, ‘Holy crap! The phone keeps ringing!'” Voltz said.

A year ago, they began setting aside days in “the lab,” Grobe said.

“Fundamentally, what we want to be doing is exploring how everyday items can do extraordinary things,” he said.

They started by visiting Auburn’s Office Max and spending three hours roaming the aisles with clipboards. They filled a car with an assortment of goods – paper clips, erasers, ring binders – and took them to Fritz’s home, a former Grange hall on the outskirts of Buckfield, and played.

Slowly they narrowed their exploration to sticky notes, eventually spending three straight days studying their Slinky-like qualities before stumbling on the promise of an act.

The waterfall was born.

“I live for those moments,” said Grobe, who has spent the past 20 years performing as a juggler, comedian and circus performer.

“Coming from the circus, you don’t think twice about spending six years to develop 10 seconds, if those are going to be the coolest 10 seconds you can imagine,” he said.

Grunt work is their secret, Grobe said. They spent six months crafting the Diet Coke and Mentos act.

“You spend a lot of time just poking and poking and poking and poking,'” said Voltz, a lawyer who trained as a juggler and performer. “You say, ‘I’m just going to be so stubborn; I’m going to keep doing this until I find something cool.'”

For the video, Grobe and Voltz packaged up half-a-million sticky notes from their special stash and sent them to Hollywood. The sticky notes were supplied by 3M, which signed on as a sponsor while Grobe and Voltz were still exploring the act.

When the Post-It manufacturer asked the pair how many pads they wanted, Grobe, a Yale math whiz, quickly guessed 4,000.

Two weeks later, a tractor-trailer arrived early in the morning with 46,000 pads on three pallets.

The 3M folks merely wanted to make sure the performers had plenty.

“They were happy to share,” Grobe said. “I think we got enough to line the road from here to Boston.”