cherry stem

This effect goes like this- you take a detached cherry stem and put one end of it in your mouth, and when you take it back out, there’s a cherry attached to it. The cherry is real, it’s really attached, and spectator could take it out- but that’d probably be weird.

This is one of those that I thought of the effect first with no solution. Then way later the simplest solve hits me like “oh of course”. I don’t have a lot of “visual” stuff like this, so I really cherry-ish this one. HA.

And just a heads up, this works best for camera. I realized this after having to do a bunch of retakes. I’m also not great at being in front of the camera, but there’s no other way to do this really. So, sorry for the lack of charm and screen presence or whatever.

Here’s what it looks like:

You’re probably already familiar with the method. Remember that old spoon bending trick with the extra handle? Same thing, but applied to a cherry stem.

You’ll need two cherries. One with a long stem, the other shorter. It was a little difficult to find stems that were as long as I would’ve liked. Detach the short stem, and you can discard/eat that cherry.

And hold it like this:

When you place the detached stem in your mouth, you also sneak in the cherry. You’ll need to move the detached stem under your tongue and keep the attached stem sticking out. I had trouble getting it to stay visible in the video since it’s so small. That’s why you want to use the longest stem you can find. And I open my mouth before to show there’s nothing inside, so it doesn’t look as weird when I load the cherry.

If you do find a really long stem, your angles are much better- you can curl in your fingers more to hide the cherry. And goes without saying, but be careful not to detach the cherry.

Those that perform angle sensitive slights for video- props. It is hard. I don’t even remember how many takes this took. And even then it’s not perfect. I was going to do another version where the presentation is that you’re going to tie a knot (you pre-tie the knot and keep it hidden), and you do tie the knot, and the kicker is that a cherry comes out attached to the stem. But wasn’t trying to do a bunch more takes. Haha.

Anyways, get a bunch of cherries and figure out how it all works best for you, and be ready for some trial and error.

I dig this. Had it in my notes forever. Tag me if you give it a try. (Don’t mess it up!)