New Release Round-Up #4: Penguin Black Friday Edition
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Time for more uneducated opinions on new releases based solely on the advertising copy and first impressions.
Today we’re focusing on Penguin Magic’s Black Friday releases. Of all the magic companies, Penguin probably does Black Friday the best. They come out with a bunch of new releases, have a ton of bonus gifts for spending at certain levels, and they have their 5 for $99 section which was once a beacon of good deals but needs to be revamped. Now it’s like shopping in a bargain outlet store at best and a janky flea market at worst. Those types of places can be fine if you just happen to be looking for some cheap scented candles or a VHS copy of Wrestlemania 8 highlights, but they’re not really a big draw. At the very least, most of the Penguin Live Lectures should be in the 5 for $99 section, not just the old ones. The majority of the physical products that are in there are DVDs, so that tells you about how current the offerings are. Most of these things should already be discounted to $20 without having to buy $5 of them.
Penguin did a 12 hour livestream last Friday which was surprisingly watchable. I mean, there’s no reason to actively watch more than an hour or two, as they’re repeating a lot of the same information throughout most of it. But as a way to launch their sale I thought it was pretty effective. If they do something like that again, they should add more live performances. I mean live as in live during the livestream. Not a live taped performance. What people want to see is that you have confidence in these tricks to show them without a safety net, considering you are expecting people to go out and perform the tricks in that way.
Now let’s get into the tricks that were released this year in their Black Friday Sale. The headings below are all clickable links. But it’s not like I’m getting commission or anything, so you can just go directly to Penguin and find the products listed there.
Laced Up by Donnovan Mount
I think this looks great. A borrowed ring is linked to your shoelaces. That’s where it starts, but then it gets weirder with you moving the knot on your laces to a different part of your shoelace, untying it, then moving it back up. Check the demo, that will be clearer than me trying to describe it.
The weaknesses to the effect might be:
Motivation. Why are you attaching a ring to a shoelace? This might be a trick where the visuals are interesting enough that you don’t have to over-justify it. Although it might make sense to walk them through the process with some rationale. “When I’m cheating on my wife, I need to put my wedding ring some place. But I don’t want it to fall out of my pocket. Or leave it on the counter where the prostitute can take it. I found a very safe place is here at the bottom of my laces. Now if the prostitute—sorry, sex worker—wants to steal it, she has to unlace my entire shoe first. Which I’d probably notice, I think. But it also means I have to unlace my shoes in order to get the ring back too. So I simplified that by moving the knot.” Etc. This would be a good presentation for many of you because you seem like the sort of person who pays for sex.
Googleability. The problem with a very unique trick is that it becomes much easier for a person to search out online should they choose to. Maybe do it with something other than a ring, if possible. (A house key?) So they don’t have all the keywords they need to track down the exact trick.
Die-Abolical Bet by Nicholas Lawrence
A die is place between two playing card and set on a shot-glass. You, or the spectator, press down on the top card and the die penetrates into the glass.
On the Cafe, people are concerned about switching out the gimmicked card after the effect.
Nicholas Lawrence replied in that thread:
“For people worried about the switch.. this kinda hurts my head, as it’s a very basic and easy routine to learn and it really shouldn’t be something a seasoned magician worries about”
I’m not sure why it “hurts his head” as it’s literally the most basic concern a performer should have with this. Especially a “seasoned performer.”
If you push a die through a playing card, 100% of everyone’s suspicion is on that playing card. It’s not on the glass or the die. There’s no available “offbeat” after the penetration. Distracting them from the cards will be obvious. So you need a smooth, somewhat imperceptible switch.
I’m wondering if the top card of the sandwich could be a rough paired (or something similar). So at the end you could cop the bottom card while spreading the top pair and handing them out to be looked at. In that way you’re seemingly giving them the object of their suspicion immediately. Perhaps something like that is covered in the instructions if it’s possible.
I actually got an early version of this trick to play with.
It looks good I think.
Okay, I lied, that’s just a card with a little flap I cut into it. But that’s my point. Cutting a flap in a card isn’t something I learned from a summer spent at Tannen’s Magic Camp. It’s an obvious solution. If your performance doesn’t account for this, you’re screwed.
Hand Drawn by Nick Popa
This is a fun one. You draw a small black X on your hand and make it move to another part of your body.
I have a basic idea of what must be going on here, but it honestly looks better than the simple explanation that’s in my head. And this was, I think, the only trick that was demonstrated live during their livestream and it looked good there as well.
The patter Nick uses—that he used to go to clubs and they would draw an X on his hand to show he was underage, but he’d move the X somewhere else (so he could get loaded)—is perfectly fine. You just need to add another line. Say something like, “I’m just going to demonstrate it with a little X, because I don’t feel like scrubbing off a huge one later.” Because when you go to a club, they don’t draw teeny X on your hand. So you need to justify why you’re doing so in this case. Saying you’re doing so because you don’t want to deal with a big X later makes sense.
Real Viewer by Mandy Hartley
You read someone’s mind based on what they’re looking at in a View Master (or the generic equivalent).
There’s nothing gimmicked about the viewer itself. The reel of images used is designed so you can fish for what they’re looking at. But other than that, it’s not gimmicked. The question is, would you do a fishing-type trick like this if it was seven different postcards? Probably not. So what you’re paying for is the novelty of doing this with a View Master. And if that’s worth $40 to you, then this could be a fun thing to have lying around.
I don’t think this would work great in a show setting because there’s no way for the audience to really understand what the person’s options are or what they’re seeing. Yes, you could explain they’re looking at slides of different landmarks, but if the audience can’t really visualize what they’re seeing, the reaction is going to be weaker. It would be like if you were showing a spectator on stage a pad of different drawings, but you didn’t show it out to the audience itself. The trick wouldn’t be as strong.
And even with a small group, where the viewer could be passed around and everyone could look into it, you’re not really going to want to do that because then everyone will be following along with your fishing with one of the locations in their head and they’d realize, “Hey, that sort of works for me too.”
So this seems to me to be best performed one-on-one. But there may be some elements to it that I don’t quite understand that make it more usable in other situations.
It’s pretty clear what you’re getting here, so if it’s your type of thing, it could be fun.
Axis by Rizki Nanda
Effect: You balance the deck and the card case in a few different ways.
For me, this looks the weakest of the lot. Not bad, but just “okay.”
To be fair, it may look better in real life than on video. This is often true of balance effects, in my experience. So I’d have to see it in person to really judge.
There you have it. Penguin also launched a re-release of Tamariz’s Sonata and Dean Dill’s Blizzard and a couple decks of Christmas-esque playing cards. You can read more about their Black Friday deals here.