Magic Tricks

First I’ll start with the good. The actual gimmick is fantastic and loaded with potential beyond the effect provided. A little imagination and creativity and there are a lot of directions you could take this one.

Now the bad; the routine provided is in my opinion, embarrassingly bad. I can’t imagine ever performing this as presented. Don’t get me wrong, I think the idea of having the spectator name a word is great, it’s just the steps you have to take to prepare as provided in the tutorial are terrible and I would never use them. Also I find it rather annoying that although the promo shows the reactions of some real world performances, those uncut real world performances are not included in the tutorial. Instead we get a single performance for an off-screen spectator (who is probably doubling as the cameraman) in what looks to be a semi-finished basement. Baffled as to why those real world performances were not included since so much value can be gathered from that.

Bottom line this one loses a star because I disliked the tutorial and set-up trick so much. It still gets 4 stars though because it’s a great prop which I have no doubt will be fantastic after applying some of my own creativity toward it. Had Penguin had the go-ahead to give their own tutorial (with maybe some thinking from let's say….Rick Lax) under the MyPenguinMagic section for those who purchased this, my guess is I would’ve given this the full 5 stars.