I have sold the more recent watch winders by Fun, Inc, (and they work well), but the older "Royal Magic" Watch Winder is much nicer, made of heavier metal, and works perfectly, and louder. They recently sold a Fun Inc/Royal watch winder of lesser quality than these older Royal (only) winders -- the more recent Fun Inc/Royal watch winders were also made in USA, but from a lighter weight metal. And these older ones were flesh colored, which does camouflage the gimmick a bit more when you have it palmed.
About 25 years ago, Royal stopped the flesh colored winders, and went to a silver-colored metal, still fairly heavyweight, but lacking the flesh color. More recently, the silver-colored winders they make are a lighterweight metal.
This listing is for one of the better quality, heavyweight versions with the beige outer housing.
I recently did some research and discovered that the watch winder gag goes back at least to the turn of the century -- a watch winder was advertised by Martinka in 1898, and Hoffman's Later Magic (1904) describes the prop. Over 100 years later, the prop still gest great reactions -- surprised amusement from adults, and shrieks of joy from kids!
I just found a few of these better quality Royal watch winders among some "new-old" dealer inventory -- I estimate they are from the late 1990's.
This handy little device can be easily stolen from your jacket or pants pocket, and then used to create a loud, raspy clicking noise. The original use was to activate it while pretending to wind your watch, and the audience hears the watch being wound up very loudly. But the instructions provided with it give you 24 more ideas -- everything from cracking your neck or back as you bend over, to winding up your deck of cards before you do a card trick. Other ideas include using it as your screw in a lightbulb or twirling your mustache.
I often use my watch winder in my birthday shows, when shaking a young volunteers hand -- as the kids arm moves up and down, it seems to crackle. The kid sometimes thinks it is really his arm, and the other kids go nuts, of course.
Use your imagination and you will have fun with the Watch Winder. Easy to do, but does take a bit of practice to use this smoothly without too much hand movement. There is plenty of misdirection for most uses, based on larger movements covering the smaller ones.
Get one and start having more fun!
Again, these watch winders are from new-old dealer inventory -- they are new and unused, but 25+ years old, and reflect the higher quality of production on the prop that was used back then. The newer (lesser quality) watch winders are getting hard to find -- these better ones are REALLY hard to find.
