Product description: João Miranda is one of the leader in magic creation! I love his Timeless, for me, it’s a wonderful combination between a powerful effect and an amazing method. Prison Deck is his latest release and will allow you to prevent people from pulling the deck out of the box. It’s a well known plot with a new gimmick, specially made by João and his team. Let’s see if this is something which could fit into your repertoire.
Price and where to buy it: This is sold at $49.95 and you can find it in nearly every Murphy's magic partner !
What you get: You get the usual packaging from João, well illustrated and inside, a card in order to watch the explanation and the gimmick. The explanations are well shot and you get to learn how to handle the gimmick and how to use it. It’s a bit tricky to find the solution by yourself so I think you’ll have to watch the video in order to learn how to open the Prison Deck. The gimmick in itself is really well made and should last a long time since it’s made out of some sort of plastic, which cannot be torn. There are a few pros and cons to the gimmick which I will talk about later but I think that you need to try this out with REAL people because your magician point of view may interfere in the opening of the trick. Overall, it’s not a cheap project but it’s a well made one with a sturdy gimmick, you won’t be disappointed by the quality of the whole thing.
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:
The deck is a bit big and if you’re used to classical Bicycle box, prepared to be a bit surprised when you open this. But in normal conditions, nobody will notice the difference.
You, and only you can remove the cards from the deck, you can’t give this ability to a spectator, it has to be you.
THE PROS:
The prop is really well made, they had to remake all the tuck case and I think it has been a hard work to make it.
This can play as a gag and also as a pseudo hypnosis routine, without giving too much away, you could pretend you remove the strength of somebody using this. I’m not a big fan of making fun again and again of the spectator, I find it a bit pointless but what I like here is the versatility of the effect.
You don’t have to put cards in the gimmick, you could place a silk or something else inside so you don’t do the “cannot pull the cards” but more a transformation of the cards into another object.
If you don’t want to use it, just don’t use it! You can totally use it as a regular card case and perform the no pull whenever you want.
It’s quite easy to perform it, the move isn’t “natural” but you will master it within minutes.
Overall rating: This is an interesting prop for many possible performances but it doesn’t fit my style, if you like it, you will use it, 3/4 hearts.
As for the difficulty level, it’s almost self working but you have to master a bit the move, nothing tricky, 2/5 stars.
Similar products: This is a common plot, which has been explored by some magicians but I don’t have any tricks to recommend to you. I think Paul Harris worked on this plot.