I've been practicing the cups and balls lessons in Mark Wilson's Complete Course in Magic. For the final load, I would love to load three Devil Duckies instead of lemons or other pieces of fruit. But the load move naturally accommodates round objects, not odd shaped things like Devil Duckies. Devil Duckies don't roll smoothly, quietly into place -- they THUNK clumsily into place. Simple physics. A Devil Ducky is not round. Is this awkwardness something that a long road of practice would take care of, or is trying to work with Devil Duckies an unholy alliance that I should avoid?

Just work with them more and make sure you are directing attention well at the point of the load(s). If magicians can load live chicks into cups, you can get these to work.

Are Devil Duckies hollow or solid? Or can you get them either way? Check with Archie McPhee.

I use to load jumbo dice into my cups... it can be done very quietly after enough practice (and not as much practice as you might think) until one day I accidentally wedged one good... ooopsie! Unfortunately I had the opposite corners at the one angle that didn't work. It was a real bear getting it out without harming the cup... not to mention the blown effect :-Z Anyway, if there is any "give" in a devil duckie (I don't know what that is) you shouldn't have the problem I did...

Devil Duckies are rubber ducks with devil's horns on them. I bought my wife a leopard skin Devil Duckie; it will collapse, but the valve includes a squeaker mechanism. It won't fit in my Gazzo cups when it's fully expanded, but its hollow nature enables you to crush it down pretty small. You will have to experiment to get it to reinflate when you want it to, but showing that the duck doesn't fit in the cup could be very impressive.



Curt

Thanks everyone for the feedback. Since I practice in a very quiet environment, and since I only do close-up magic, I find myself being sensitive to the relatively small amount of thunking made by devil duckies. (I'm sure a live chick would make a lot more noise, although Michael Baker points out that some magicians use live chicks.)

I have a lot of practice in front of me just to make devil duck loading look smooth visually. Once I get that down, I may come up with ways to deal with the noise issue. (The restaurant where I was doing tricks for friends last night was so noisy that I had I been doing cups and balls, the noise level might have easily covered up the devil duckies thunking and possibly even covered up live chicks. Of course, using live chicks would get me kicked out of a restaurant, but Devil Duckies would not.)

The Devil Duckies that I own are about the size of a Cadbury creme egg with a head on it. This is a hollow squeak toy. I can load it without making it squeak, but it still seems somewhat noisy inside the cup at this stage in my practice. Practice, practice, practice....

That's what I thought. I had seen these in the McPhee catalog, and thought about getting some of them in various sizes. Here's a hint. Disable the squeaker. Then use the Gazzo technique to make them squeak. If you don't know that one, Let me know, and I'll PM it to you.

Using the charlie miller move (the "roll" move) you can manipulate a non-round object while under the cup.

In addition to heeding some of the helpful comments on here, I also recognized that the cups I was using were just too big. (They were plastic cups that maybe hold 20 ounces.) I've switched to 8 ounce Styrofoam cups and the difference is significant... simple physics means that the ducks can't thunk as much. So when the ducks are being sinister, at least they're being more silent about it....

(I'm holding off on getting a good set of cups and balls until I feel well-practiced in the basic routines presented in Wilson's books.)