Title: Profiles The Social Mentalism Routine
Artist: Sean Haydon with Mark Shortland
Producers: World Magic Shop
Link: http://www.murphysmagic.com/Product.aspx?id=53179
Retail Price: $33.50 USD
Learning Difficulty: Moderate
Length of DVD: 30 minutes
Notes: Some memorization work will be required


Includes:
• Instructional DVD
• Social Media Profile Cards


DVD Features:
• Play All
• Performance
• Overview of the Gimmicks
• Catfish
• Date Night
• Digits


Profiles The Social Mentalism Routine is a unique and flexible piece of pocket mentalism that you can perform anywhere up close, and it uses props that should be relevant and familiar with audience members of just about any age.

You produce a packet of six profile cards of various ladies from all around the world. The profile cards are designed to imitate the look and feel of a Facebook profile. From here you can do a couple of different things depending on whether you want to do a single trick, or if you want to build a full routine out of it. So let’s take a look at the tricks you can do.

Catfish:
You show a packet of profile cards to the spectator and remark about how each of the girls are absolutely beautiful as you go through them one at a time. After you’ve shown all the girls to the spectator you tell them they are going to go on a “date” randomly with one of the girls. Once they’ve made their selection, but before they find out who their date is you ask them if they’re familiar with the term “catfish”? You explain that a catfish is someone who in reality isn’t who they pretend to be online. They turn the card over to reveal that their selection is NOT a pretty girl at all but an old cigarette smoking ugly woman!

Date Night:
You tell the spectator that they are going to go on a lovely date to Paris with a beautiful girl to see a movie starring Christian Bale at a specific time. The spectator mixes up all the cards and discards selections down until only a single profile card remains. When they turn it over the beautiful girl he’s dating lives in Paris, whose favorite actor is Christian Bale, and the time you said the movie was is printed on her profile as well. All the profiles are different. The spectator is left gobsmacked.
Digits:
You have the spectator mix the cards up and randomly select any one of the cards they want. You offer them the chance to change their mind if they wish. They look at the card, and then from across the room you slowly start to receive information from the spectators mind. You pull out your phone and punch in the phone number to the girl he’s looking at revealing the numbers one at a time!

The profile cards are very well constructed out of thick plastic card stock. They’re small enough to fit into your wallet and durable enough to take a beating and still be usable. They are ideal for travel, or day to day use. The gimmick is well hidden, but very obvious once you know what you’re looking for. This means that you’ll be able to get the information you need at a distance while the spectator even under close examination will never see it.

The DVD shows you everything you need to know to perform the different tricks. It explains the gimmick, and how to use it, and makes things pretty doable as far as learning the tricks is concerned. There is a bit of memory work involved, as is a common theme with mentalism but don’t let that scare you. There are more than enough hints, and tricks built into every inch of these cards to act as memory aids. Once you spend a few hours with the cards you’ll be amazed at how fast you can recall the different profiles and their information!

Performing Profiles has been a lot of fun for me. It’s a piece of magic that is very relevant to my generation being that just about everyone I know has or has had a Facebook profile. Social networking is everywhere and being able to do a bit of mind reading with something that looks like a Facebook profile is just such a nice touch. While you can certainly perform just one of the three tricks with a spectator you really miss out on a lot of the impact this particular prop has if you just chain one effect strait into the other. By the time you’re done with the spectator they’ll have no choice but believe you have some real super powers. The reactions I’ve gotten from this effect has been priceless. It even was responsible for landing me a pretty good strolling magic gig!

Given how small this item is, being that it fits well in your pocket or wallet, and how durable it is, being made from thick plastic stock, this item is very practical for daily use. It’ll hold up well, travel well, and hits hard. Just the way mentalism should be.

When I give my product scores below I am measuring them on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 Being absolute the worst score possible, and 10 being the absolute best, making a score of five average. The four points that I grade upon is Product Quality, Teaching Quality, Sound & Video Quality and Overall Quality.

Product Quality: 9
Nice price, solid product, and good instructions. All around this is a win.


Teaching Quality: 8
Trying to learn mentalism can be a dry and daunting process. Trying to learn mentalism that requires you to memorize stuff can be worse. Thankfully this DVD (and product with all its hidden aids) really took the sting out of memorization work.

Video & Sound Quality: 9
Sound and video are both good.

Overall Quality: 8
Good price. Good magic. And above all it’s actually more relevant to the spectator than a deck of cards. This one has the power to devastate if done correctly. I’m actually going to get a second copy to put in stock should in case I ever lose or damage beyond use my current copy. I love it that much. I think you will too!

Before I start I would like to say that I received this trick as part of a deal (it was free with the purchase of Soma's The social deck) so I haven't had to pay for it. However, as a few buddies have pointed out, I still (kind of) paid for it (as I probably wouldn't have purchased the social deck if it wasn't a part of a deal).

Ive had this trick now for a week, and I wholly agree with the review, however I feel I should point out one floor(?) in the whole setup…

I (fortunately) noticed on day one that there is a 'issue' with one of the cards, namely the 'Danni" card and the phone number on it. The last digit SHOULD be a '5' but is printed as a "3" (I don't want to give out the method involved)

Now this may only be for the current batch of cards, I don't know how many prints there have been since the original batch of printing?

I immediately called the supplier / manufacturer (World Magic Shop) on the Saturday, telling them of the error, and was promised a call back when they had looked into my issue. Well, by the Wednesday I still hadn't heard anything, so called again, only to be told that they'd checked their stock and it seemed to be only an error in my cards. To quote the person on the call, "I've done this trick many times and I have never had a problem…" I insisted that I wasn't making it up and so sent them a photograph of my Danni card.

Today I received an email from the team telling me that they now realise that the error I have found is on ALL of the current stock, but that they have no plan to do a re-print and thus rectify the situation for the foreseeable future.

Yes there is a work around, so long as you remember that the card is incorrect, but really is this acceptable? Isn't that like suppling an invisible deck where you cannot be sure that the 'method' is being followed throughout the whole pack, thus leading to a chance of showing AC instead of AD (for instance)?

You may say I'm being difficult, but two things have happened here…
1) I was told it was my problem (and made to feel that I was wrong),
2) it doesn't fit the taught method.

Again I repeat, the methods are good, and it's a nice little packet trick, but I think anyone buying / already in possession of it, needs to know there is a fault with the item (ATM), that could (if you're not aware) lead to embarrassment during it's presentation.