Introduction: How to Separate a Bag of Pudding From the Pudding Cup

Are you currently nine years old? Do you need a way to impress your friends and firmly establish yourself as the coolest kid in the class? If so, prepare to be amazed. 

Few people know that there are several layers in a plastic pudding cup. Even fewer know that, with a bit of perseverance, you can separate the layers and have a super-cool-neato bag of pudding and an empty plastic cup. Read on to find out how.

You will need:

an unopened plastic pudding cup (your choice of flavour)
fairly thin fingers (If you have enormous meaty hands, forget it. You're just going to make a huge mess.)
about 10-20 minutes (depending on your skill level)

Also, it makes it a lot harder not to pop the bag if you have grotesque, talon-like fingernails, so cut them to a reasonable length before you begin. If you have extremely short fingernails, this might be pretty hard for you. Fingernails 1-2 mm long are ideal.

Step 1: Preparation

First, procure your pudding. Being that you are nine years old, your mother has probably packed it for your lunch. If not, "borrow" a pudding cup from a friend or relative. Make sure it hasn't been opened. 

I would also suggest washing your hands first, in case you do break the pudding open and still want to eat it. Nine year olds have filthy hands, and any food touched by them is teeming with death. 

As an aside, I am almost positive that this will not work with yoghurt. You can try if you want, but be prepared to fail and become the laughing stock of grade 4. 

Step 2: Begin the Extraction

Look at your pudding cup. Really look at it. Now, find the tab that you are meant to pull to open it. DO NOT OPEN IT. 

Examine the edges closely. You should be able to see three layers if you look hard. The top layer is the metal lid bit. The bottom layer is the plastic cup. In between, there should be a fairly thick layer of soft plastic. 

You want to separate the middle layer from the bottom layer. Separating the middle layer from the top layer is referred to as "opening" the pudding cup, and let me tell you from experience, NO ONE will be impressed if you do this.

Wedge your thumbnail in between the bottom two layers, and slowly pull them apart.

Step 3: Continue the Extraction

If you are doing this correctly, you should be able to pull the tab back a centimetre or two, and the pudding will still be safely sealed in.

Good.

Continue lifting the middle layer around the edges of the cup.

Step 4: Getting Down to Business

By now you should have at least part of the rim of the cup separated from the middle layer. At this point you can start going down the sides of the cup. You may be able to use your thumb or forefinger at the beginning, but soon you'll want to switch to your pinky.

This part is why you can't have big sausage fingers (though since you're nine, you probably don't). Your fat fingers will pop the bag and you'll get pudding all over yourself, your friends will laugh and you will cry. 

You should be able to tell where the middle layer has pulled away from the cup. I have pointed it out for you in the pictures. 

This part takes a while, but keep going. It's worth it!

Step 5: Getting Closer

You now have the bag separated almost all the way from the walls of the cup. Be careful when you get to the bottom, that's when the bag is most likely to burst. Otherwise, just keep doing what you've been doing.

Step 6: Finished!

Even when the bag is fully separated from the cup, there may be a bit of glue holding it in. Take advantage of this. Turn the cup upside down and tell people it's levitating. Amuse your audience.

When they get bored of that, simply pull on the bag, and voila! You have separated a bag of pudding from the cup! Congratulations, you awesome person, you. Everyone's gonna want to be your friend now.

As for what you do with the bag, well, that's really up to you. You can play catch with it, you poke a hole in it and squeeze out all the pudding, you can give it a name and keep it in your locker until it starts to go moldy and stink up the hallway and your teacher yells at you to throw it out, so you pretend to but actually keep it and throw it at her car later because that'll show her! (Don't do the last one. No, seriously.)

I'm assuming that the reason they have the liner for the cup between it and the pudding is because it's not entirely food-safe, so it's probably best not to eat out of the empty cup, regardless of how cool it is.

Above all, have fun!