Powder of Life
The Powder of Life was a magical powder which brought inanimate objects to life, awakening with fully-formed personalities and the power of speech, though little in the way of skills or world-knowledge. It played an important part in the history of many versions of the Land of Oz.
History
Stolen by Blinkie
In at least one universe's version of Oz, it was created by the Crooked Man. According to Blinkie's recollection, it was then used by various parties to animate “the Pumpkinhead, and the Sawhorse, and the Gump, and the Glass Cat, and the Patchwork Girl, and the Phonograph, and a bearskin rug”. When Blinkie returned, she had her imps Olite, Udent and Ertinent steal the sole remaining bottle of Powder of Life and bring it to her. Having created an army's worth of imp statues using the Magic Belt, she intended to also duplicate the bottle of powder and use this vast stock to bring the thousands of imps to life, creating an army with which she could overrun all of Ozeria.
However, Acquaintanceship-982 managed to steal the bottle from her as she was gloating about all of this to Ozma and her friends in Jinxland. He'd been told to fly off with it and dispose of it, but Blinkie, who thought he was simply trying to escape and hadn't realised the bottle was onboard, used magic to make his Ship crash in the forest. There, having misunderstood the purpose of the Powder, Acquaintanceship tried to use it to repair his Ship. This brought the Ship to life as a sentient, talking being, startling Acquaintanceship into dropping the bottle, with the remainder of the Powder spilling out onto, and animating, his bow and arrows. After helping to save the day, the sentient tools were offered the chance to stay in Ozma's Emerald Palace on a permanent basis. (PROSE: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids in Oz)
Behind the scenes
The Powder of Life first appeared The Marvelous Land of Oz, L. Frank Baum's second Oz novel, published in 1904. As such, it is in the public domain. The Powder's history prior to being stolen by Blinkie, as given in The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids in Oz, is accurate to Baum's original books.
More precisely, the Crooked Magician's first batch (which needed an incantation to activate) was first tested on the Glass Cat (as revealed in The Patchwork Girl of Oz), then traded to Mombi who used it to create Jack Pumpkinhead, then stolen and used up by Tip who used it to create the Sawhorse and the Gump (all seen in The Marvelous Land of Oz). A second batch, which only needed a wish to activate, was inherited by the Crooked Magician's relative Dyna in The Road to Oz after his supposed death, and used to bring to life a bear rug. Finally, The Patchwork Girl of Oz revealed that the Crooked Magician was alive and had created a new batch, which seemingly no longer needed any particular ritual to take effect, which was used to create the Patchwork Girl and the Phonograph.
The latter book also specified that making a simple handful of Powder requires four separate pots of the right potions to be stirred constantly for six years, which explains why Blinkie needs the duplicating powers of the Magic Belt to get enough to build an army in The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids in Oz.
