This is the familiar “magic snake” toy, which has been around for many years. The most common version of it is made of 24 right triangular prisms. It can be twisted into many different shapes.

Of course, me being me, I wanted to make polyhedra with these snake-toys. Here are three of these standard-sized toys, twisted into rhombicuboctahedra.

While it isn’t easy, it is possible to find longer variants of this toy. I found one on Amazon which is made of 72 prisms, making it three times the standard length. In this picture, the extra-long snake appears on the top, while below it are the three smaller ones, laid end-to-end.

When I started playing with the longer one, I tried to make it into a symmetric polyhedron, and found doing so quite a challenge . . . but, in the end, I prevailed, by twisting it into a hollow octahedron.

This longer version may be found here on Amazon, in case you’d like to get one of your own. The smaller ones are easy to find (just search for “magic snake toy math”), and cost a lot less. I’m glad to have both sizes in my collection of geometric toys.