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So I'm going to my first magic convention tomorrow and I will no doubt be surrounded by many many dealers at some point trying to find out what I want and what they can sell me to fill that need. One of the things I'm interested in is a better ending for my sponge routine.

Right now I use one of those ball to cubes which I use not so much for a transformation, rather to disguise my final load as one of the other balls during my loading process, but I want to load something bigger. Much bigger. I've seen all kinds of big final loads that look like rabbits, rocks, sushi, penises, what I'm really interested in is where to find a better technique for making the final load. I figure the best instructions will either be contained as a small part of a big book or come with one of the jumbo loads.

So the question is, where should I steer my search when I'm surrounded by every product under the sun?

-Stacy

Look at Pat Page's Sponge Balls DVD. He gives you loads of good ideas and teaches them well.

Also, remember the end of the routine doesn't necessarily need to be anything large, the important element is that it is radically and impossibly different to what the audience were expecting to appear.

Your best and most effective ending, Stacy, is the Shower of Sponge Balls.
When you open your hand at the end of the routine, many small (I use 1 inch) sponge balls shower from it all over the Stage or Cabaret floor or with slightly less than the normal 20+ sponge balls, all over the table.
The late Joe Riding first gave me this idea.
And I have used for about 37 years!

It was not , however, until 2004/5 that I devised an easier way of coping and handling them.
The Shower no longer goes all over the floor (getting too old then to pick them all up afterwards).
It comes at the end of my Electric, Fall Apart Stool routine, and about 20 balls just swell up in the assistant's hands, filling them.

Allen Tipton

Another idea Stacy, is at the end of Aldo Columbini's 'Throw In The Sponges', used when I did Close Up.
Part of this routine involves a half sponge ball so when they guess I have 2 in my hand --it is 1 and a 1/2.
For his ending, Aldo used a very large metal nut--the type you screw on something..his patter line being something like 'I'm a bit of a nut'.

I substituted for the final surprise the 'Zebra Egg', obtainable from a joke shop.This is a small plastic white egg with black stripes on it.
Ending is when they name how many balls they think I have now in my hand-- 'No it's an egg! A Zee-bra egg'. This is the egg and this (BREAKING THE EGG OPEN) is zee bra.
A mini bra falls from the egg--it is attached so it hangs from both halves of the egg shell.

Allen Tipton