Press a button and the wand throws a real fireball. Swap the tip, and it breathes out smoke in white, blue, red, green and yellow, drifting through the dark like something out of a spell book. Almost everyone who sees it for the first time asks the same question: how does it do that?
This is our answer. It runs from years of building props for magic brands to fitting fire, smoke and light into a single wand, with a lot of failures along the way and one happy accident. When we started, we had never seen a wand on the market that could do all three. If you’re looking for fire magic tricks for the stage, a party or Halloween, you’ll find the five effects this wand can do at the end.
We didn’t start with wands
Before the wand, we spent years developing props for magic brands, including Ellusionist, SansMinds and Murphy’s Magic (see the full list on Our Expertise).
Two kinds of props from those years matter here, and most people in magic will know the names:
- Smoke props: Pure Smoke (2011) for Ellusionist; Vapr (2013) for SansMinds, and the Vapr Watch (2017), which packed a whole smoke system into a wristwatch. All of them turn fog fluid into vapor and blow it out as smoke
- Handheld fireball launchers: Pyro (2014) and Pyro Mini (2015) for Ellusionist. A heating wire ignites flash paper in an instant and sends the flame racing out of a tube
Those two technologies became the wand’s smoke and its fire.
Smoke: 30 seconds, silent and thick
Building a smoke prop comes down to three problems:
- The heating coil must not burn out after long heating, and it has to work again and again
- The vapor has to leave the prop as thick smoke, with real force: smoke blown from the wrist has to reach all the way to the palm
- It has to be silent. On stage, even a hint of fan noise breaks the magic
The coil is the hardest part. It lives in a contradiction. On one hand it is like the element in an electric kettle, sitting in wet fog fluid without shorting out. On the other hand it is like a hair dryer: air blows on it constantly, and it still has to vaporize the fluid completely into thick white smoke. And no matter how often it heats up, it must never burn out.
Every fix seemed to create a new problem:
- To get thicker smoke, we made the cotton wick hold more fluid. The coil ended up too wet and kept shorting out
- When we turned up the power instead, we got big bursts of thick smoke, but after only a few uses the coil burned itself out
So a good coil has to do two things at once:
- Survive dry burning in a stream of air, like a hair dryer. When the fluid runs out and isn’t refilled in time, the coil keeps heating with nothing to vaporize while air keeps blowing on it
- Take sudden high heat in a wet environment, plus a surge of current every time it starts puffing, press after press, without losing durability
Heating Coil Dry Burn Test for a Smoke Prop
Smoke Cartridge Coil Durability Test for a Smoke Prop
We tried tungsten and chromium before settling on nichrome. The material was only half of it; tuning the resistance was the real key. We made at least 20 nichrome coils with different resistances, paired them with different currents and tested them one by one. It took at least a year before we were sure: a coil that works in a wet environment, survives dry burning in a stream of air, and draws power steadily.
A Year of Coil Testing: Smoke That Doesn't Short Out or Burn Out
Silent, and the air carries far. The smoke has a long way to travel before it comes out. It starts at the bottom of the handle, passes the atomizer, then runs through the narrow air tube in the shaft, about 340 mm in all, before it leaves the tip. A small fan loses its push in a long, narrow path like this: in our repeated tests, less than 30% of the airflow made it to the outlet.
Instead we use a piezoelectric ceramic micro-blower from a Japanese electronics maker. It is about the size of a thumb joint and has no blades at all. A ceramic disc vibrates tens of thousands of times a second and pushes the air forward pulse after pulse, with almost no loss along the sealed, continuous air path. So after the smoke has traveled the length of the wand and left the tip, it still pushes about 300 mm further through the air. The vibration is above the range of human hearing, so the whole thing is completely silent. As far as we know, no other handheld prop is this small and this quiet, with air this strong that carries this far.
The toughest build was the Vapr Watch: the whole vaporizing and blowing system inside a wristwatch, with smoke coming out by the strap buckle, strong enough to reach the palm and just as thick. Vapr and the Vapr Watch were both specified to puff continuously for 60 seconds. After the watch, fitting the system into a wand was a different kind of challenge: a long, narrow space instead of a small one.
On the wand today, a short press gives a 3-second puff, and holding the button keeps the smoke going for up to 30 seconds.
Smoke emission: short and long presses
Fire: why the fireball reaches 13 feet
The principle is simple: the coil heats up, the flash paper burns in an instant, and the flame shoots out through the barrel. The details are the hard part.
- Barrel length and bore: too short or too narrow, and the fireball falls short. We tried many lengths and bores before we found the combination that throws the farthest. In our tests it reaches 13 feet (about 4 m)
- The ignition base: the coil heats up in a flash, to around 700–800 °C (about 1,300–1,500 °F). We started with silicone, because it can be molded into any shape the mechanism needs, but it can’t take heat the way ceramic can. Metal conducts heat, and electricity too, which means short circuits. In the end we chose ceramic: heat-resistant, stable and easy to shape. The catch is that ceramic can’t be prototyped by hand. There is no room for trial and error; the design has to be right, go straight to tooling, and only then can it be tested
- Battery life: igniting flash paper takes a lot of power. The Fire Wand Fireball‘s 200 mAh battery gives about 300 shots per charge; the Fire Wand Almighty Pro‘s 300 mAh battery gives about 450
Shooting distance: Evil Bunny vs others
One more secret: the metal barrel you can’t see
Pick up the wand and look closely, and you’d think it was carved from a single piece of dead wood. It isn’t.
The barrel at the tip is metal; the shaft is plastic. Join two materials that different and the seam usually shows at a glance. We use water-transfer printing to put wood grain and growth rings onto the metal barrel so that they line up exactly with the grain on the shaft. The whole wand reads as one dry branch: you can’t tell the tip is metal, and nothing about the joint looks out of place.
The real difficulty comes next. When the wand throws a fireball, the barrel gets very hot, and printed finishes usually scorch and peel. The grain on this barrel doesn’t come off, no matter how many fireballs it throws.
It’s a piece of craftsmanship we’re proud of: the function stays hidden inside, and the outside is simply a wand.
Loading: details learned the hard way
How easy a fireball prop is to use comes down, in large part, to loading the flash paper.
Some fireball props on the market come with a metal needle as the loading tool: a sharp point on one end to push the paper in, and a hook on the other to pull out a sheet that jams. We don’t use that design. If the trigger is pressed by accident while loading, the paper and the metal needle can be fired out together.
What we do instead:
- A plastic plugger: grip the paper, twist a few times, push it up to the stop, and it’s loaded. The tools have bumpers, so they don’t scratch the heating coil
- Pre-cut flash paper, folded like tissues: pull one sheet at a time, no scissors needed
In our tests, this way of loading gets 4 shots off in 35 seconds. It isn’t a revolver that fires several shots from one load; each shot is reloaded, and it’s fast because each reload is fast.
The Fireball Wand Showdown: 4 shots in 35 seconds
A happy accident: colored smoke
While developing a smoke product, we tried something that wasn’t in the plan: we let white smoke flow past a light tube glowing in different colors.
The color of the light showed up in the moving smoke. When the tube glowed white, blue, red, green or yellow, the smoke in the dark turned white, blue, red, green or yellow.
In that moment we thought of the wands in the books: Harry casting Expecto Patronum as a silver stag bursts from his wand; Dumbledore drawing a silvery wisp of memory from his temple and dropping it into the Pensieve. In that magical world, there is more smoke and light than fire.
That is also why the colored smoke needs no dye or chemicals: the smoke stays white, and the color comes from the light.
Colored Smoke Without Chemicals: The Accident Behind Our Smoke Wand
Most colored-smoke guides online are chemical recipes. We took a different route: nothing burned, nothing added, just light.
The hardest step: fire, smoke and light in one wand
Fitting the smoke system and the fireball system into one wand was harder than the watch or the handheld launcher.
We made the light tube and the barrel interchangeable tips, and the handle recognizes which one is fitted:
- With the light tube: it makes smoke and light, and the wand will not ignite. That is a feature, and a safety design
- With the barrel: the coil fires and throws a fireball
Both the electronics and the mechanics were hard.
Either tip needs at least three wires: power, plus a signal that tells the handle which tip is on. Run those wires on the outside, and the barrel and the light tube would look like an octopus with tentacles: awkward to swap, and no longer looking like a wand.
What we had to solve was fitting at least three wires inside a 9 mm tube, so that the tip connects the moment it meets the shaft, and the wand throws a fireball or lights up and puffs colored smoke. From the outside, there are no wires or contacts on the tip at all.
The wand’s design is protected by a granted Chinese utility model and 3 design patents, and the trademark is registered in both the US and China (see the patent).
Why it sat on the shelf
When the wand was finished, we showed it to our partners in the magic world first. They saw it as a toy rather than a prop for fire magic tricks, so they didn’t take it on. For several years, it sat on the shelf.
Then we decided to take it to the toy and gift market ourselves. Building a brand isn’t easy, but we believe the details it took years and many failures to find are what make this wand worth having.
Five fire magic tricks you can do with it
These fire magic tricks are for performers, party hosts and Halloween fans:
- A fireball: fit the barrel and press once for a real fireball (ages 18+)
- Fireballs in quick succession: with pre-cut paper and the plugger, reload after each shot and fire 4 in 35 seconds (one shot per load, not a revolver)
- White smoke: fit the light tube; a short press gives a 3-second puff, and holding the button keeps it going for up to 30 seconds
- Colored smoke: in the dark, let the smoke flow through white, blue, red, green or yellow light
- Colored light and a flashlight: with the light tube fitted, wave the wand or tap the button to change color, and hold the button for a white flashlight
Which wand fits the fire magic tricks you want to do
| What you want | Which one | Ages |
|---|---|---|
| Fireballs only | Fire Wand Fireball | 18+ |
| Fireballs, with refills in one box | Fireball Wand Combo Set | 18+ |
| Fireballs, colored smoke and light | Fire Wand Almighty Pro | 14+ for smoke and light; 18+ with the barrel |
| Fireballs, colored smoke and light, with refills in one box | Almighty Wand Combo Set | Same as above |
Safety
- Fire magic tricks use real fire: keep the wand away from anything flammable, including curtains, hair and clothing, and never aim it at people
- Before using it indoors, check the venue and local fire rules
- Flash paper is not food grade; never use it on food or drinks
- Smoke: use it in a ventilated space and away from smoke detectors
- With the barrel fitted: ages 18 and up
FAQ
How does a wand fire a real fireball?
A heating coil ignites a sheet of pre-cut flash paper, and the flame shoots out through the barrel. The paper burns away completely in the air.
How do you make colored smoke without chemicals?
If you’re wondering how to color smoke without dye, let plain white smoke flow through colored light. The color of the light shows up in the smoke, so no dye or chemicals are needed.
How far can the fireball travel?
In our tests, about 13 feet (4 m).
Can one wand do both fire and smoke?
Yes, one wand covers both smoke effects and fire magic tricks. Swap the tip: the handle recognizes the barrel or the light tube and switches to fireballs or to smoke and light.
Is a fire prop like this safe?
Follow the safety notes above before trying any fire magic tricks. The plastic loading tools and the automatic tip recognition, which stops the wand from igniting with the light tube fitted, are both safety designs.
What fire magic tricks can I do with it?
See the five effects above: a fireball, fireballs in quick succession, white smoke, colored smoke, and colored light with a flashlight.
See it for yourself
- Watch these fire magic tricks in action: Fire Wand Almighty Pro, Fire Wand Fireball, Fireball Wand Combo Set
- Retailers and gift shops: Become a Dealer
Harry Potter is a trademark of its owner. Pure Smoke, Vapr, Vapr Watch, Pyro and Pyro Mini are trademarks of their respective owners. Evil Bunny designs its own products, protected by patents (see Our Patents), and is not affiliated with any film studio, theme park or author.
