Magic Tricks

I am a Scott Alexander fan and have several of his effects. I'm really pleased with most of them, though folks often argue his tricks are overpriced. Unfortunately, this one won't change anyone's mind, and this time they are right.

First the props. If you already do Scott's "Shoe Business", you are familiar with the prop. It's basically a five dollar prop in an eighty dollar trick. You also need paper bags, but if you do Scott's "Nailed It" or "Shattered" you already have the right bags (or can get them online reasonably in bulk). So the majority of what you are paying for is the routine.

And there's the problem. Scott doesn't show you the routine in the video for a good reason. If you saw it, you'd skip this one immediately. There's very little actual magic here, and in four performances of this trick in the explanation video, the audience seems distracted and/or bored during the presentation (it may be where they were filmed). There are a few good jokes when Puck performs it, but for the most part this is kid's birthday party stuff. If you have a great imagination, you can probably turn this into a brief gag presentation. I would say this was worth half the asking price for it (being generous).

I will continue to look at Scott's stuff in the future and probably buy more, but this was a big misstep. It may be a big hit in their show, but I don't see how. Skip this and get "Shoe Business" instead for better audience interaction.