Traffic Light

A trick for children with all the elements of good children's entertainment:
A sophisticated routine, colourful, impressive props, playful highway safety training, when the magician gets it all wrong and the kids can correct him.
There is a series of effects which children of all age groups can understand and, last but not least an unexpected climax, when...

But first things first.

The children are shown a a clear Plexiglas tube on a stand, a red plastic tube, and three balls in the traffic light colours which the magician takes from a paper bag. In a playful routine the magician takes the children through the colours and their meaning in respect of traffic, pretending to be stupid himself. Then the Plexiglas tube is covered with the red tube and the balls are put into the tubes in the right order, i.e. first the green ball at the bottom, next the yellow one, in the middle, and then the red one on top, just like the colour sequence in real traffic lights.
Now the magician lifts away the red tube and the children see that the colour sequence is completely mixed up. The red ball is at the bottom, the green one in the middle below the yellow one. Much as the magician tries, he cannot get the sequence of the balls in the tube right. He now asks a child from the audience to join him and help him with the awkward colours. Together they decide that it must be the red ball that gets things mixed up all the time. So that ball is wrapped up in a piece of paper and given to the child to hold. The magician puts the two remaining balls into the tube.
The wrapped-up red ball turns into an apple in the child's hand, while all three balls are suddenly in the right order in the tube.