The Invention of Vita-Wonk

Mr Wonka's earlier invention Wonka-Vite made people younger, but too strong doses sent some into minus ages. He must invent something to add age back.

Wonka-Vite worked too well - people became younger and younger until one man was minus eighty-seven and had to wait decades to return. Mr Wonka needed a new invention.

Wonka asks: what is the oldest living thing? Charlie guesses a tree. Wonka names the Bristlecone pine on Wheeler Peak, over 4000 years old.

Rolling up his sleeves, Wonka asks what lives longer than anything else. Charlie answers 'a tree.' Wonka specifies the Bristlecone pine in Nevada, USA, which can live more than four thousand years.

Wonka travels the world collecting odd samples - pine sap, Russian farmer's toenails, tortoise egg, horse tail, cat whiskers, old flea, rat tail, black teeth, cattaloo knucklebones.

In the Great Glass Elevator he gathers a pint of Bristlecone sap, toenail clippings from a 168-year-old Russian farmer, an egg from a 200-year-old tortoise, and many other ancient fragments from exotic creatures.

After boiling, bubbling and testing, Wonka produces one tiny cup of oily black liquid - four drops are enough to test.

He tracks down imaginary beasts like the Whistle-Pig and Venomous Squerkle, mixes everything in his Inventing Room, and finally holds one tiny cupful of oily black Vita-Wonk.

A twenty-year-old Oompa-Loompa drinks four drops to test the potion.

Wonka gives four drops to a brave young Oompa-Loompa volunteer while Charlie watches anxiously.

The volunteer wrinkles, loses hair and teeth, and becomes seventy-five. Vita-Wonk is invented.

The moment he swallows it he shrivels, his hair drops off, his teeth fall out, and he becomes a seventy-five-year-old man. Thus Vita-Wonk is born.