Product description : Is it a trick ? Is it an illusion ? Or is it just a fun and magical piece of kit, as most Tenyo items ? It's really hard to describe but the illusion and the magical moment is quite cool. Two blue cards with a hole in the middle, you put a red backed card between those two and, with a little bit of magic, the red card passes through the 2 others. The blue cards can directly be examined and after that, the red one. Stand alone routine or just quick and visual piece of magic, it's up to you !
Price and where to buy it : This is sold at $29.95 and you can get from any partner of Murphy's Magic !
What you get : You get a plastic sleeve, DVD size, not the usual plastic boxes you're used to receive. Inside, you will find the DVD and I must say Mickael tried to do things right with this, with a white background and a slightly better quality of filming so kudos to him. The explanations are clear and easy to understand and he goes into different ways of performing the trick. You're also provided with the gimmicks, inside a nice little kraft envelope, they're well made and should last some time if you take care of them. I think the way they were made could have been different and disguise a little bit better everything. But since you're not showing really the gimmicked side of the cards, it's not a big deal. Am I happy ? Well, if you know Mickael, you won't be surprised by what you receive but the illusion is convincing so yes, happy !
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 maybe a little bit expensive when you consider it more like an mini illusion rather than a real magic trick.
You don't want anybody to watch it from under of course, the secret would be very quickly revealed if somebody is watching from under so be careful with kids.
It's a general con here with Mickael but his methods all look the same, you know it will use ***** and ***** (I'm just putting stars here to avoid any exposure) but I think the method is not that exciting. Of course, this is a small con because we only want the trick to be exciting for layman but it was just something I wanted to say.
THE PROS :
This trick is fooling, I've been fooled watching it and I fooled magicians (and laymans of course) with it so again, typical Mickael's stuff here, very ingenious and fooling.
The trick is not self working and I think this is a good thing, people will have to master it, practice with it and learn a proper presentation before doing it. Most of Mickael's stuff was automatic and I think this one requires a little bit more patience and skills than the others.
The heat at the end is on the two holed cards which, fortunately, can be examined ! And that's the beauty of the trick, you can do the dirty work with your red card when they want to see the 2 blue holed cards. So you have all the time in the world to do what you want.
As I said, you do see live performances and clear explanations, I've been saying for a long time that Mickael's product were not really well produced and here, he upgraded the quality of the DVD.
I wouldn't put any gimmick in my deck and I wouldn't let the spectator examined the holed cards at the beginning of the routine (even if you can do so) and this because I don't like having gimmicks in my deck of cards. This would rather be in an envelope I pull out and do the trick than in my deck, just a quick tip here.
Overall rating : Even if the method didn't excites me, maybe because I know most of Mickael's work, this trick does get great reactions if done correctly. It's not my cup of tea, I don't like to carry so many gimmicks for one trick so I will give it 3/4 hearts.
As for the difficulty level, it's not self working and you will have to practice for some time before getting it smoothly so 2/5 stars, nothing impossible but a little bit of work is required.
Similar products : If you like this plot, you can check his first Hole which was quite cool too !
Thanks to Murphy's Magic for sending me this product !