I found this $3.00 18 inch tall Plush Flower toy at my local
Toys-R-Us store. Right away it caught my imagination as something
that could be turned into a magic trick. Then two magic tricks.
Then an entire routine began to emerge in my mind. So I broke
down and bought one.
Effect: A translucent flowerpot
is shown empty and is placed on your table. The flowerpot is
filled with soil from a special canister of soil, using a scoop.
The soil fills up the flowerpot and can be seen through the
translucent sides of the pot.
Next, a “seed” is planted in the soil and it is
watered. The magician shines a flashlight on the seed. Suddenly a
large flower pokes its head up over the top of the flowerpot.
When it is about 18 inches tall, the flower can be
“picked” from the pot and carried around in the
magician’s hand.
The center of the flower is seen to have a “face,”
similar to a “happy face,” but the eyes are closed.
When the magician plucks the flower from the flowerpot, suddenly
the flower’s “eyes” open wide and maybe it yells
something about being picked before its time.
The flower can talk to the magician, either by means of
ventriloquism (in which, in my opinion, every magician should
have some skills) or by having a “backstage voice” or a
recorded voice. Both the flowers eyes can blink together or
independently (so it can “wink” at the audience) and
its mouth opens and closes.
The head is so small that it doesn’t pay to have the
eyes move from side to side, but if you wanted to televise the
face and project it on a large screen, that feature could also be
included.
The flower can bob its head up and down, which makes it
possible to seem to wither and die when you breathe on it, and so
on, but which can also be used when the flower sings a song, to
bob its head up and down in rhythm to the music.
You can make the flower seem reluctant to be planted back in
its flowerpot. Every time you try, it pushes its lower stem or
root this way and that trying to avoid going back into the pot.
When the flower is finally placed back into its flowerpot,
you can have it perform a card trick as in the old “snake in
the basket.” A spectator selects a card, the card is
shuffled into the deck and then the deck is dropped into the
flowerpot. The flower sinks down into the pot and cards fly out
over the top of the pot. Finally the flower rises back up with
the selected card in its mouth. Alternately, it could keep
choosing the wrong card and finally rise up and turn around to
show the selected card on the back of its petals. The point is,
the flower’s rising and lowering and turning in the pot is
under your control.
A good surprise can be obtained by having the flower complain
that there’s not much room in the flowerpot because the
worms are taking over. The flower asks you to dig out some of the
worms and move them to another pot. You reach into the pot and
search for worms, but don’t find any. Instead you do a
production of funny sponge rubber items that the flower has been
hoarding as “treasure.” At the end, spring snakes fly
up out of the pot and the flower thanks you for finally getting
rid of those pushy worms. Then it sinks back into its pot and
just seems to disappear along with its soil. The pot is shown
empty and put away. As an optional ending, the original soil
canister can fill up with soil as the flowerpot soil vanishes.
WJ11-08
$5.00
Buy all 12 articles of this issue (#11)
of the Wizards' Journal $40.00
That's less than $4.00 per article if purchased together!
WJ11-COMPLETE
