Bounce / No Bounce Balls
$11.99Beginner
← The effects
Bounce / No Bounce Balls
Two balls that look identical. One bounces to the ceiling and the other hits the floor dead — and they swap over in a spectator's hands.
- Difficulty
- Beginner
- Performs
- Close-Up, Parlor, Street, Walk-Around
- Type
- Transformation
What they see
The effect from the front
A ball is bounced. It comes back high. A second, identical ball is dropped and lands with a thud, like a stone.
The spectator is given the bouncing one and told to bounce it. It does not bounce. The performer takes it back and it bounces immediately.
The routine is a sucker trick in the proper sense: the audience is invited to work it out, is allowed to think they have, and is then shown that whatever they concluded was wrong. Done well it is funny rather than smug, and the laugh is the effect.
Provenance
Where it comes from
A twentieth-century manufacturing effect that depends entirely on two rubber compounds looking identical, so it could not have existed before the materials did.
It has circulated as a dealer item for decades under several names and no single inventor is reliably credited — a reminder that the magic trade has always been better at selling props than at recording who made them.
Learning it
What it takes
Easy to do, hard to make funny, and the difference is the whole trick.
The handling is simple enough to perform the day it arrives. What separates a good version from a shrug is the timing of the spectator's failure and what you say about it — the effect is comedic, and a comedic effect performed straight is just an odd demonstration of two balls.
Worth watching someone good do it before you decide how yours should go.
What you need
Props for the Bounce / No Bounce Balls
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Transformation
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Restoration
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