Hair unbrushed and breakfast uneaten, John Reuter grabbed his credit cards, jumped into his Chrysler and drove 2.5 hours straight to the Grand Canyon airport.

There he boarded a helicopter, which swooped him through the towering rock walls to the bottom of the American natural wonder. A few steps off the helipad he stood before a vending machine dispensing $130 glasses with video cameras. The much-hyped Snapchat Spectacles.

“I have no clue what these things do. I don’t even have a Snapchat,” said Mr. Reuter, 29 years old and from Henderson, Nev. “All I know is people want these badly.” He bought four pairs, took the helicopter back up—the ride cost $250—and immediately put them on eBay. His profit by the next morning: $1,100.

Instead of putting its new video-recording sunglasses on sale through an online or physical store, Snapchat, recently renamed Snap Inc., has created a real-life, nerd-version of the “Hunger Games” to achieve marketing buzz.

Here are the rules in Snap CEO Evan Spiegel’s arena: The camera-equipped glasses, which can record 10-second Snaps, or video clips, are sold only through Snapbots—vending machines that look like SpongeBob SquarePants mated with a Minion from “Despicable Me.”