Transcript
Ben:Do you want to see something really cool?
Female:Yes.
Ben:Grab a small handful of those M&M’s.
Female:Okay.
Ben:Hold them out like this.
Female:Okay.
Ben:I’ll go for one of the green ones. Watch carefully.
Female:No. Come on, I was looking at your hand the whole time.
Ben:Yep.
Female:Where’d it go?
Ben:Right over here. Check it out.
Female:How’d it get in there?
Ben:I don’t know.
Female:Come on.
Ben:You want to see it disappear again?
Female:Yes. You couldn’t even get it in your mouth. How’d it happen?
Ben:Here’s how it works. It’s really easy. First, you have someone . . . you can do it right from the bowl or you can have someone scoop out a handful. It works with M&M’s, it works with peanuts, really, almost any bar snack that there is. First of all, there’s a secret setup. When nobody’s paying attention, you take an M&M and you put it in the hidden location; you can put it in a shot glass and cover it up, you can wrap it in napkin. Don’t put it in your pocket, it’ll melt.
We’ll use the shot glass again. Then we put it in there. My aim is off today. You put it in there, you cover it up, and you leave that in plain sight. This is the tricky part: You have someone scoop out a small handful. Would you do that again? Then I say, “I like the green ones,” because I have a green one hidden over here. I look through like . . . we’ll add a few more in there just for good measure. I look like I’m trying to find a green one and I scoop it like this, but the secret is that I just don’t actually pick anything up.
The way to practice and get good at this is you do it for real. Say I’m actually looking for a green one. I say, “Let me get a green one,” and you scoop it up and you take a green one. That’s how you practice. When you’re doing the magic trick, you want it to look exactly the same. Here we are, a green one. Nobody knows that you don’t actually have one here. Then that point that really sells it is that you take this imaginary M&M and you place it in the other hand. They think they’ve seen you pick one up and put it in the hand. Then you snap your fingers and it’s gone.
Female:Because it was never there.
Ben:Exactly. Then reappears wherever you like.
Female:Great.
Ben:That’s how you make an M&M disappear and reappear.
