Year: 2004

Clever Mr. Dobson!

Wayne Dobson has a great set of routines to breath live into you himber or Z-Fold wallet. The wallet that comes with this set is a very nice leather wallet and quite small. The instructions are also very detailed and laid out in a very pleasing manner.

It is perfect for playing card and business card effects. I for one will be performing 2 or 3 of the routines that come with this great value product!

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The Exquisite Joy of Mel Babcock at his Finest!

When it comes to Die Boxes, Mel Babcock really is in a league of his own. If you have never experienced the giddy feeling you get when you receive one of his packages you are truly missing out on one of Magic’s great experiences!

This latest version of the Die Box, based on an old Thayer design, is surely the best Die Box Mel has ever made. As with his standard Die Box, the weight and feel of the box is perfect. You have to hold it to really appreciate how well it sits and works in your hands. All the actions are incredibly smooth.

Now for the extra features – the doors and ends of the box have inlayed wood panels which truly look beautiful. In addition you are supplied with two brightly colored and superbly painted dice, which during the course of the routine change places and finally change into two dice of totally different color.

I can’t express how wonderful I felt as I opened my package today – but as far as early Christmas presents go, there is no finer!

A wonderful, wonderful piece of craftsmanship.

Highly recommended!

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Still incredible!

Some times when you receive a new magic effect the reviews are overly gushing with enthusiasm, only to find when you sit down and play with the effect more that they are not quite all what they are cracked up to be.

It has been about 14 months since I purchased the Predator Wallet and I have used it many times since my initial review. I can honestly say that it is my secret weapon when I want that killer effect to really blow them away. I nearly always end my close-up act with this now and just know I will leave them speechless.

Yes I do perform the "Psycho Killer" effect, and I know you could perform many other great effects, but for me it is just about perfect.

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This totally wows them!

I was performing this just the other night and had forgotten how utterly amazing it is to watch. I have been a fan of Wild Card for over 30 years and now I perform this instead.

Although it requires the same basic moves as Wild Card, to the spectator more magic happens as they appear to mentally choose the card that eventually all the cards change to. Also, because you start of with 2 sets of 5 different cards it also seems a bit more amazing.

Highly recommended!

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Note to self, Cheap is Bad!

Ok I know not to buy the cheap imports from India, but sometimes you forget and a product looks nice on a web page …

This clock actually looks ok when you receive it. But it’s really not a practical implementation. You can hear something turning when you turn the clock hands (that is not the hands) and if you put it on a table the box actually moves!

It was cheap and a good reminder that quality comes at a price. In this case the price is a totally unusable effect!

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Sadly, this is no Al Goshman!

Well this is a nicely produced set of salt shakers from Mikame. They have one primary goal – to make us all look as good as Al Goshman! Well not really, but at least they try to make his signature effect (Salt & Pepper Shaker, Page 39, Magic by Gosh) possible for mere mortals.

To replace all the sleights required for Mr. Goshman’s effect including: The Edge Palm, The Classic Palm, The Clink Pass, The Coin Roll and The Toss Vanish amonst others is a tall order for any mechanical device. And of course even then you just have the mechanics, you’ll never get close to his Performance!

But if you want to produce coins seemingly at will beneath the salt shaker without sleight of hand then this is the outfit that is meant to do it. And when I first tried it out, I tapped four times and each time one coin appeared and I thought wow, this is cool! Unfortunately, as I played with the props more sometimes no coins appeared and other times two or three appeared. So the skill required is knowing how hard to tap. Unfortunately I fear that you will always be worried about the wrong number of coins appearing.

Which leads you back to practicing the actual sleights so you can in fact control precisely when coins appear. So my advice is to buy the Goshman book (for less than these shakers) and practice the effect as it was meant to be seen. This is one item that I don’t feel comfortable leaving to mechanical means.

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Wow! What a Deck!

This has to be one of the finest gimmicked decks I have ever seen. Sean Taylor has really thougt this through so that not only can this be used for a multiude of new and different mentalism effects, it will work well with many, many standard card effects too.

It is really hard to fault the manufacture, thought, and design that went into this deck. The ad copy you read about this incredible deck is spot-on and you will probably end up buying two decks!

I love it!

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Another Winner!

This is a really wonderfully clean piece of Jumbo Card Magic. You show the 4 kings one at a time front and back.

Then without any moves you turn all four cards over and they are the 4 tens! There are no flaps or rough and smooth and it is very easy to do.

The Jumbo version is actually easier to handle than the regular version.

I have a vague memory of the same principle being used in a trick when I was growing up, but don’t remember the details. Even so this is a very smooth handling and a very convicing effect. Reset is almost instant too!

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Better than I remember and a real fooler!

This is a nice little outfit from the medium priced Dove Pan manufacturers Morrissey Magic. I used to have this effect a few years back but didn’t have the instructions so missed half of the routine. And it is a whole new effect when you have the complete story!

Anyway, this is a classic cards across – spectator counts out 10 cards on to the tray and you tip the tray into the previously shown and ungimmicked empty bag (or their jacket pocket). They then count the other 10 onto the tray and cover it with the tray to ensure they can’t get away! Needless to say 3 extra cards appear in the bag and you are left with only 7 cards in the other spectators hands.

What is great about this effect is that the tray does all the work for you with ultimate ease. A great effect and a clean method!

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I love Attaboy, but this is not as convincing.

The inspiration for this effect comes from the old Jack Hughes effect: Attaboy. However, in my opinion it is not as convincing as Attaboy by quite a long margin. The device is made well enough in strong plastic and the art work for the eye is fine.

The idea of taking cards from one side and replacing them on the other until a specator calls stop certainly leads to some interesting routines, one of which is detailed in the instructions. However, I don’t think it looks that convincing – with Attaboy you have 12" or more between the two banks of cards, but with this the cards are right next to each other. Even if it looks like the cards are coming from one side and being replaced at the other – as it does – the cards are just too close to not rule out that you did "something".

In fact, I think you are better off doing The Glide and skipping using the Wink paddle altogether and you can achieve similar results. It is true that multiple cards can be forced easier using the Wink paddle. However, the more that the paddle is used the more the move arouses suspicion.

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