In 1979, I had watched a friend of mine do Flagstaff in his act. It seemed cumbersome and obvious. More flash than magic. So, I developed Flagtastick. Put it on the market at a very cheap price at the time. It got 4 stars in Genii magazine.
It developed as an automatic way to produce the flag. But with the addition of vanishing Red. white, and blue silks, it added several dimensions and combined effects.
Now, I had a vanish of silks, a production of Flag, and when done together it was a transposition as well. More of a Morphing or a Blendo effect. Fitzkee would have been proud.
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The modern one, with the help of Bob Sanders, made the effect lightning fast, and Larger. Bigger silks, bigger flag all due to the use of pure silk.
I now also use up to a 36" flag, sort of a banner production.
Also in developement is a 2'x60" streamer production utilizing two flagtastick sets and 6 silks.
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For a while I had a torch to Flag as well, I jokingly called it "Flaming Flag-it", but that wasn't politically correct. However, it works exceedingly well.
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I was always known for combining effects or taking known methods and applying them differently. I always did a very nice Dancing Cane, and I combined it with Waltzing mathilda for an exceptional little piece of haunted magic and dual flying objects.
-----One Mathilda silk was amazing to watch as it flew around the flying cane in directions you wouldn't deem possible. The ultimate difficulty was using two Mathilda's and a dancing cane.. The silks fly around each cane and nothing gets tangled. The motions of the objects cannot be associated with any hand movements either. That really wasn't hard to do, the hard part was trying to stop all the movements gracefully.