You spend months working on a knuckle busting 4 phase card routine and after performing it flawlessly the trick they remember from your set is the one with the sponge bunnies.

What Tha is another one of those infuriating gems.
Is it a bird? Is it a gremlin? Is it a baby Skettis from the Dark Crystal? Who knows?

Be ready to be asked to perform this again. Be ready to be asked to show this to the wife. Be ready to be annoyed when you run into someone a year later and they still remember the bird thingie and none of your other effects.

...I received my What Tha a few days ago...and have spent a few hours workshopping the effect. I have to say I find 'it' to be very interesting.
The gimmick is well made...and could last for years. Take care of it...probably will outlast you.
The method is easy to earn....Mr. Lovins teaches it thoroughly...and I feel the 'moves' can be nailed down by relative beginners within an hour. That leaves it up to the performer to make the effect 'live'.

I am not a beginner though.
Without revealing the actual method....there is 'more' to this than meets the eye. TT, coin and t****le skills can be applied to the 'it' and the 'critter' can come and go in even more ways than you might, at first; imagine.

The reactions I got from using the effect as purchased (9xs
so far) were strong...and the 3 men who saw 'it' ALL said
"What tha #%*@ is that"?
Then...I opened my hand and the 'it' was gone.
The 6 women who saw 'it' backed away and laughed.
(All 9 saw it in one on one performance...prefaced with "Did you ever see one of these"?...kind of in conversation...people who did not know I am a magician.
Just 'workshopping' 'it'.)

ALL 9 thought 'it' was alive.

Roger, it's been 50 years since I learned a French drop. Been around for a while.
This 'it' is actually a lot of fun to work with.
The 'critter' will be in my pocket, a lot...waiting for the proper time to come and go.
Thanks.

Let me just start by saying that i really love this trick. People believe there is some kind of animal in my hands and that its trying to jump out of my hands at them. Girls scream, guys are startled, and then they all ask what it was and where it went after I made him disappear. I have been using this trick the most ever since i received it in the mail simply because it is easy to do and it gets great reactions. The only reason i gave this four stars instead of five is because i have used this gimmick so much that the feathers are falling off and although i love the trick i don't want to spend twenty dollars on a new one after every several weeks of use. Does anyone know of a good way to maintain him after the feathers have fallen off?

It looks like the head of a sparrow.

I'm a tour guide in the nation's capital. One day, a baby sparrow flew into my lap as I was seated outside -- near the White House -- giving my tourist group some time to take photos.

Instantly, the TOURISTS TURNED THEIR CAMERAS TO THE SPARROW. CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! Forget the White House, the Capitol, all the Roman, Greek architecture.

Hell, this little bird was ALIVE, and she wouldn't budge out of my shirt. She snuggled in. All you saw were her eyes and beak.

And that is when it hit me.

Nature beats stone. Which is why Washington, DC, was purposefully designed to FULL of trees... attract the birds.

So some day, we could see a little bird up close.

For me that's the appeal of What tha"

Don't use this as a throwaway but be quick about it.
I suggest your hand hold a fistful of grass -- and then what tha appears...and then let her fly away!

I like this a lot!

I'm having a wonderful time with this trick - easy to do and great reactions. Problem is that it falls apart very easily. This is the third one that I have purchased and I'm trying out a new storage system. First two were stored in an extra large thumb tip but then everything stuck to the sides. Now I am keeping it in a drugstore pill vial to see if it lasts longer.

I don't know what kind of glue Rodger used to put this together but apparently it doesn't ever dry because mine is always gooey and slowly coming apart

Rodger has taken what used to be just a gag and made it into a real stunner. You have to see one of these things up close to really understand how real and life like they look. This is a great peice of magic to always have in your pocket.

I am going to have a lot of fun with this. It has the potential to be my favorite trick

I've finally figured out a way to preserve him when not in use.

But when I DO USE HIM, I have not figured out a way to prolong his entrance into my act.

I think he deserves much more than a few peeks out of my fist. I'm thinking. I'm thinking.

I had to go to emergency surgery once after a bad fall on concrete pavement opened up a deep gash in my arm -- and I showed the doctors what had come out of my bloody hole.
"What Tha?"

Great idea, similar to "Creature" by Keith Lack and "The Littlest Demon" by my late friend DeNomolos (Ed Solomon).

The gimmick is unusually sticky as hell... Which ultimately resulted in the feathers coming off and ruining the gimmick/prop, to my sheer disappointment. Ultimately within a week of use the gimmick is now completely destroyed despite my best efforts to protect it and keep it shielded. I'll now have to try to resurrect it myself using a different kind of glue if that's even possible OR worth my time, money and effort.

All in all, and in all justness, I DID get great results from it in performance before it got destroyed (I took supreme care of it mine you, and it still got wrecked).

One performance highlight was while casually performing it on the train, knowing that a nosy passenger was staring at us in the seat adjacent to ours. I held my hands cupped as if holding something delicate, drawing subtle attention to my hands. I made the "thing" peak out of my cupped hands for a moment and closed up my hands, while gesturing to my wife, for me to place "it" into her pocketbook. After miming placing it in her bag, my wife quickly zipped it up as if it would try to escape, lol!! A couple minutes later, rosy the nosy passenger leaned over to her husband an whispered to him: "I just saw something really, really weird, I think we should move to another part of the train." ;)

Since the gimmick came apart on me within only the first week of using it, I in all honestly cannot recommend it. Again the idea and concept (although nothing new) was good, yet the execution was very poor in my opinion and in my experience. there are a million different types of glue on the market, Rodger Lovins couldn't find one that actually works? No excuse!

I recommend passing on this effect/prop UNTIL Mr. Lovins comes out with a non-gooey and durable gimmick.

P.S. The gimmick Mr. Lovins uses in his explanation video looks a hell of a lot more realistic and better than mine. Keep that in mind as well.

Dua.