Month: May 2022

One of my favorite effects as a teenager!  I remember being blown away by this after I received it from Ron MacMillan’s International Unique Magic Studio. This of course is better known as Lubor Fiedler’s Dice Shocker (or sometimes: Shock Dice, Shock Die), it is a true beauty and very startling to watch.

It was sold by Supreme c. 1969 and Tannen’s c. 1970 and they were purchasing directly from Lubor Fielder in Austria. It is not the same as Lubor Wurfel or Lubor Die which is another name for Gozinta Die or Boxes.  The original versions from Lubor were much nicer. I saw a later version from Tannen’s recently and it was nothing like this quality.

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This effect is based on a an old children’s toy of the 1930’s: “The man in the barrel”. Others, including: Eddy Taytelbaum, Fred Kaps, Ken Brooke, Herbert Martin Paufler, Tony Lackner, Vienna Magic, and more recently Francois Danis, have also created effects with the same basic principle.

A wonderful classic piece of magic from the great German master Tony Lackner.  The little guy just sits there headless and alone until the chosen card is waved over him then he jumps out and impales the card!  Visually great and surprising to the audience! 

This is what it says in the ad copy but in fact it is a little misleading.  The body of the man is placed inside the barrel and the magician holds the head above and at the appropriate time the head is dropped onto the card causing the body to leap out and trap the card between the body and the head.  If you look at the advert from the Ace Place to the side you can see how the head is held in the hand even though it clearly says in the ad copy: “the magician is pushed down into the barrel where he remains with just his head sticking out of the top.“

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When Jim Simon of Worth Magic (before Milson-Worth) created the Astro-Ball Cabinet c. 1965 it caused quite a stir because Jim basically took Phase 1 of Stewart James’ Sefalaljia which was a ground breaking five phase routine when it appeared in issue 69 of The Jinx December 2, 1939. As Stewart James himself said in an interview with Jeff Busby in 1987: “I expect the originality in that version was the use of a cocktail glass.” Ouch!

Even so, the Astro-Ball Cabinet became one of Worth’s and later (this one) Milson-Worth’s most iconic and successful effects. The cabinet looked stunning and the effect was amazing with little effort on the part of the magician.

This is the rarer Black and Gold version – the more common version is the Red and Gold seen here.

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This is Jack Ruda’s finest hour 🙂

The smaller version was called The Temple of Goo, a hand-crafted gem that quickly became a favorite among collectors. Jack created three versions in the smaller size: the first had just 3 places in the cabinet to place Goo and was know as The Temple of Goo Fong sold by Ron Allesi as a limited edition of 50 units. The second version which was the better of the two was slightly larger with 4 choices.  The third was the same size but used a remote control unit to turn the device on and off. 

The version on this page is the much rarer and much larger Temple of Goo Two. This is a stage size version with 4 choices and a separate base and completely different electronics. 

Only three of these were made and they were custom made with a wait time of at least six weeks. This is the only one I have actually seen.  It is a big and bold item and unlike the smaller versions there are no external switches to turn on and off (or separate remotes) and the device to let you know where Goo has been placed is not part of the main Temple at all, but cleverly concealed in the base that supports the statue of Goo at the beginning.  The pedestal and the Temple can be at least 30 feet apart (that was as far as I tested it) so you have a lot of freedom with the revelation.

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