“Everything in this room is eatable, even I am eatable! But that is called cannibalism and is in fact frowned upon in most societies. Yeah, Enjoy!” These are prop walnuts created for Tim Burtons’s 2005 fantasy film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Adapted from Roald Dahl’s book; Young Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore) and his Grandpa Joe (David Kelly) win the chance to tour the magical and mysterious factory of eccentric confectioner Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp). Aided by his Oompa Loompa workers (Deep Roy), Wonka has hidden motivation for the tour, one that he will reveal only after the children in the group show their true colors. These prop walnuts were used by the live squirrels used for the nut sorting room scenes as they sorted the good nuts from the bad, with terrible results for spoiled Veruca Salt (Julia Winter). The nuts were created in dental acrylic for the squirrel’s safety and scented so that they were attractive to them when sorting.
