Year: 2020

I was twelve years old when I first saw this effect demonstrated at Ron MacMillan’s International Unique Magic Studio on Leather Lane in London. Along with seeing Eddie Gibson’s Coin Unique for the first time this visit to Ron’s studio on my birthday remains with me because I had never seen such amazing magic before.; These tricks were truly unbelievable to my young mind. Over the years I have seen many versions of Ribbon Fantastique and it continues to amaze me how simple it is to accomplish something so clean and surprising. The phrase “it’s a fooler” does not even get close to how wonderful this effect is. Invented by the genius Ed Massey c. 1945, it remains to this day one of his most effective creations.

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Francois Danis is a big paddle fan and over the years has created some real beauties. His latest offering, Hyottoko’s Journey, is probably his most ambitious, beautiful, and amazing yet.

Like all great men Francois has also taken advantage of his wife’s (Pascaline) talents by protecting the paddles in a beautiful, embroidered case, hand-crafted by Pascaline. It really complements the paddles perfectly and I hope to see more of Pascaline’s talents on display in future projects from Francois 🙂  In fact, I’m ordering some of Pascaline’s beautiful handmade stitched gifts from her store right now!

For the story teller what is really neat about this set is that instead of being a collection of three separate paddles Francois has created a routine that brings together all of the paddles flowing from one to the next.

You receive:

• A paddle with three fans.
• A paddle with a sleeve and paper lanterns.
• A mechanical paddle with Noh’s masks.
• A small display stand with Hyottoko’s face.
• A unique embroidered case to store them all.

There are three sections to the included patter:

• The Fans Paddle – a five phase routine
• The Paper Lantern’s Paddle – a three phase routine
• The Noh Masks Paddle – a three phase routine

These are all brought together in an adorable story called The Concubine Story, and what is neat is the embroidered case is featured throughout the story as you remove and replace the paddles from the case.  You set everything up in the case before you start and you are off to the races.  What a great idea that makes it easy to manage the paddles and also gives the audience something pretty to focus on too 🙂

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Thayer’s Mystic Coin Slide c. 1921 appears to have been the first version of this type of effect, followed by Carl Brema’s Coin Slide or Magic Mint c. 1925.  The term “coin slide” should not be confused with the gimmick used to load a coin into the center of a ball of wool (or in nest of box routines) which was used much earlier.

This is Clarence’s wonderful version and not only do you get a pretty little box, adorned with a cute little rabbit, it comes with two wonderful routines (and a variation) which make it seem much more than just a pretty slide. So often with a coin slide it is kind of a one off routine – you change the coin from one coin to another, but with Clarence’s routines this simple effect is turned into a feature effect. And only 17 of these beauties were made.

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This lovely and unique effect was invented by the Dutch Magician Dick Koornwinder in the 1960’s and you can read about the original version here.  Tenyo is the only company that Mr. Koornwinder has officially licensed his creation to, regardless of all the versions you might have seen.

Tenyo’s version is different from the original because it has a locking mechanism with a memory, which adds a new dimension to an already perfect effect.

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