Product description : You ask the spectator to put their hands forward and to choose one. You then draw a little cross on your hand with a sharpie marker. With just a rub, the cross will disappear from your hand to land on the spectator's one, without coming near him at this precise moment. And the cross on their hand is made with permanent marker so they can't rub it off easily. Doesn't sound that impressive or incredible when you read the description but trust me, this is one of my best buy of 2015 !
Price and where to buy it : This is sold at $60.00 and you can only find it on the Magicsmith website.
What you get : You get little plastic case with inside a piece of paper on which you can find the link for the downloadable instructions online. The video is well made and they do teach you everything, from the routine to tips about how performing it as well as how to “refill” your pen. (for the later one, you will have to buy the needed stuff on the Magicsmith website). You also get the gimmicked pen, it's an all built in device which works very well. It looks like a sharpie pen so it's perfect ! You are also provided with some stuff in order to do the trick. Everything feels quality and you can't deny a lot of thoughts and work have been put into this.
The pros and the cons : Here is the core of my review, let's begin with the cons, as I will usually be doing, I prefer to keep the good things for the end.
THE CONS :
It's a little pricey for what you get. I would have prefered to have maybe an extra cartridge or a second pen since $60 is a quite a lot of money.
You will leave people with a permanent cross on their hand, it's not a con in itself but they will have to go to the bathroom clean their hand if they want to remove it.
THE PROS :
The gimmick is very well built, as I said, everything is built in the pen so you don't have to carry anything extra apart from the pen to do the effect.
It works ! I remember having the Sansminds Sharpie and it was just not working. This does work and pretty well, you will have to try various places on your hand so the cross will disappear completely every time but nothing hard.
The trick is simple to do and to understand from a layment point of view. Since there is not a lot of manipulation, you can focus on your presentation.
They won't remember you came near them and this is very cool. The main thing people were saying after having experienced the trick is “But you didn't touch me !”. And this is very cool because you can put the cross in their hand whenever you want so you could “set” the spectator's hand way before performing the trick which is another advantage.
The pen can be used for many routines, don't feel limited by what you see on the trailer, with a little bit of imagination, you could build a whole act based on the principle behind this pen.
It's not a card or a coin trick, something which feels very organic and will leave your spectators speechless.
Overall rating : One of my best buy of 2015 ! I didn't thought I would enjoy it that much but from the reactions I got, this definitely something I'm going to carry around at all times ! 4/4 hearts for me and a big recommendation.
As for the difficulty level, maybe a small knack to get it right everytime but nothing very complicated, 2/5 stars.
Similar products : The ash on the hand is a very old and famous trick (I've seen it done with the blue thing you use when playing billiards) but Double Cross succeed in modernising this plot and it works beautifully well !