$115 shipped? Seriously???
That's about $55 too much. Thanks but no thanks.

Personally, I've been waiting for professional quality Tenyo items for 20+ years. So, the price seems about right to me.

Robert

To Eddie Garland and Robert M I say Thank you! We are excited as well. To ixnay66 and the rest who think the prices are too high, I wish you only the best using the tried and true plastic versions (if you can even find them to purchase) that Tenyo has produced over the years. Both versions will produce a great illusion for your audience. After all, some folks use plastic cups, others use Paul Fox, Johnson, etc.

For anyone who missed the article about Tenyo Elite that appeared in MAGIC magazine or haven't been following our progress, I will attempt to give you a very brief explanation in what we have been going thru at JPS Magic Studios Ltd. in bringing the Elite line into the hands of magicians.

You must first understood manufacturing here in the United States and Canada (or most places for that matter) in order to have a better understanding in regards to the higher priced Tenyo Elite line of tricks.

Tenyo Elite is being made under an exclusive license granted to JPS Magic Studios Ltd. from Tenyo of Japan. Tenyo of Japan has no financial involvement with the project whatsoever - none. Therefor the full burden of prototyping, manufacturing, packaging, promoting, etc rests soley on the shoulders of JPS Magic Studios of Canada.

For the record, Tenyo of Japan has primarily provided their blessing for the Elite project and samples of their various Tenyo items. They have also been very helpful in our endeavor by providing advice, suggestions, historical information, etc.

Now, because there are no actual blueprints or schematics of any kind available for the original plastic Tenyo tricks, each trick produced for the Elite line has been designed by literally backwards engineering the original tricks (i.e, taking each trick apart piece by piece and figuring out how it works).

In addition, making something out of plastic using an injection mold is one thing - making parts and tooling out of metals (Heavy gauge aluminum, brass, etc) is quite another. Add in custom laser etching and anodization and the prices really begin to soar. Did I mention the cool cases or bags which hold each Elte trick? Also, because we are not able to have thousands upon thousands made at any given time (i.e, we are having very small numbers ran) the manufacturing process alone is extremely expensive.

Even the cool black boxes which hold each Tenyo Elite trick have been custom designed and manufactured for us. The Elite manuals themselves are not the simple single sheet instructions one is accustomed to finding in your typical tenyo box.

Each Elite manual contains very good instructions and routines with photo illustrations printed on high gloss stock. Each instruction manual includes instructions written in both English and Japanese. Translation costs alone were enormous.

Friends, these are not your fathers Tenyo tricks. While they are not indestructable, they should last you a lifetime if cared for properly. The difference in quality can best be appreciated by holding one in your hand. The only true analogy I can think of would be to compare a cheap plastic Bill Tube to a nice heavy brass model and even that example really does not do these pieces the justice they deserve.

To sum it all up - no expense has been spared to insure that the Elite line is everything all of us had always wished the original Tenyo tricks could be.

The three of us have spent the better part of three years and thousands of dollars in the developement of the Tenyo Elite line of tricks - nothing has been rushed to market.

We are proud of what we are doing and make no apologies. If prices on materials, manufacturing and other services would have been less then we would have not only passed the savings on to our customers but would be shipping these tricks to dealers. To keep the retail costs as reasonable as possible we are only selling these directly from our website.

As it stands, you are getting a great product at the best price possible. If this places the Elite line out of the budgets of some, we certainly understand.

Hope this helps explain things a little better.

Mine is ordered and I can't wait

Paul

I ordered both and can hardly wait to see them.

magicmann and huggie50, thanks so much for your support of the Tenyo Elite line.

I am extremely confident that you will be very happy with your purchases.

Just another update, incase you haven't checked the other thread: We are pleased to announce that the first two products from the line (MoonSpinner and Fortune Sticks) are now officially in stock, and all orders have now been shipped. As we were packaging and shipping like crazy today, we kept admiring the beauty of these over and over again with huge smiles on our faces as we were packaging up each one. We are so excited for everyone, we promise you won't be disappointed!

Tenyo Elite Team.

Whoo Hoo Congrats Gents!!!

Thanks Eddie.

Received my Tenyo Elite "Moonspinner" and "The Fortune Sticks" today, and they are everything they said they would be, just as advertised. These are really nice and the instruction book is well written in both English and Japanese. I can hardly wait for the next release.

So how were they shipped..US mail, UPS, etc?

Huggie, thank you for taking the time to write up a review.

Hofzinser: Depending on your location the products are shipped via the following:

Canada - Shipped via Express Post - Approximately 1-5 business days
USA - Shipped via Expidited Post - Approximately 6-9 Business days
International - Shipped via Standard Air Mail - Approximately 7-14 Business days

Times are approximatations only and not guaranteed as there is not time guarantee on how quick the items will pass through the specific customs clearance of each country. Only business days are counted and exclude weekends and Canadian/Destination Holidays.

Best,

Peter.

Not sure if I should offer half of a congratulations or half of an "I told you so."

Any estimate on the next two?

LOL! Well actually we also had a little inside prediction of our own, and now I can say: "Jason you owe me $10 bucks" Funniest Sh....T ever! Thanks Brad for making my day!(PS happy new year Brad, hope all is well)!

As far as the release of other Tenyo Elite tricks go, we are in the process of distributing the first two releases which we are now offering through YFMD. This was our primary goal and are thrilled with the fact that due to a larger run we were able to reduce the cost and have the product priced to allow us to finally distribute these through the shops. And soon as the dust begins to settle after this huge undertaking with our official launch as you can imagine with a project this big, we will be able to concentrate on having the next tricks come out, as far as an actual date, I'll leave the predictions for now up to you Brad...

Thank you so much to all of you who have shown the support that we have received this far. As many of you know this is a labor of love, because we all love the Tenyo Franchise and the ingenious tricks they have produced over the last 50 years, and we are honored to have been able to produce Elite versions!

Peter.

We have in stock the first 2 releases from the Tenyo Elite Line

Moonspinner - http://themagicwarehouse.com/TA4967/Teny......ner.html

Fortute Sticks - http://themagicwarehouse.com/TA4966/Teny......cks.html

Howard Katz
Owner, The Magic Warehouse
http://themagicwarehouse.com

Okay need to ask something here.

Firstly, I think the Tenyo Elite concept is very good. Tenyo made some excellent effects and to move away from plastic, mass production items to props that look more professional, is clearly a step in the right direction.

However, can I be totally honest? Aren't the effects produced to date just a little errrrr - 'boring'?

Okay, before I get PM's telling me that any trick is down to it's performance and presentation, I KNOW THAT! It's just the 4 items either ready or due for production are NOT (in my honest opinion) some of Tenyo's better effects. I also question their appeal to most magicians - afterall, I assume that we are the target market given the pricing?

Dare I also say it, but the effects either produced or in the pipeline, don't seem to be the more difficult items to construct/manufacture.

If you compare items such as 'The Sandwich Platter, Zig Zag Cig, Squeeze Play, etc. that just may find more appeal amongst magicians, I just wonder how long this project may last. Maybe, we could do a straw poll for our favourite items that WE WOULD definately buy if they were once again made available?

What are your honest views Steve to the genuine points I've raised?

Has anyone else got any views?

And nearly 5 Months later, the response is exactly????

Let's be honest, this project is either:

(i) a 'dead duck'
OR
(ii) your ability to update potential, interested customers with exciting new developments is woeful.......to say the least!

Hello all:

I am writing this on behalf of my partners Steve Brooks, Peter Loughran and myself.

Merc Man, thank you for your post. I'm sure you didn't mean it to sound as nasty and sarcastic as it reads.

As you imagine, the economy worldwide is pulling itself out of a crazy crisis. During times like these, "luxury" items like magic tricks (including "Tenyo Elite" products) suffer in sales. I don't need to tell you how many magic shops have closed down, and how many others are having difficulty making ends meet in the last couple of years. Many magic creators that we know are also having their own financial problems.

As of right now, "Tenyo Elite" has had quite a bit of success from our first two products. However we have only sold about 1/2 of our stock that we had manufactured. While we have other Tenyo Elite products in development and in the prototype phase, we really need to sell the rest of our stock on our first 2 items before we spend money to make more. That is just a fact of business. How can we do this if not enough magicians are supporting us? Merc Man, pardon me for being so direct, but have you purchased one of the first two items to help support the line? If your answer is "no" and your reason is that you don't like the first 2 tricks, well then all I can say is, "Welcome to the world of producing magic!".....You simply can't please everyone----someone always wants something different.

Like many around the world, we see the economy improving, and Tenyo has been so supportive of us and also understands that we need more time. When we put this project together we were confident that they would sell much quicker, but unfortunately the world entered a recession at the time of our debut. But if we can't sell what we have, then we can't put out the next round as quickly as we would like to.

Tenyo Elite is a product line that magicians have been asking for for decades! They wanted Tenyo tricks in higher-end materials.....Well we have now delivered, and yet we are not getting enough support. It almost seems that when comments like Merc Man's read that nasty and sarcastic, it is although other magicians want us to fail, which is very discouraging.

Also the three of us (Steve, Peter and I) are very busy with our other businesses, and so we have just hired a rep to do sales for us. We hope that this move will help to improve our sales and exposure to shops. We are still amazed at how many shops around the world have never heard of "Tenyo Elite", and are confident that our rep will help to change this.

We are in no way wanting to abandon this project. Lucky for us, the three of us also have very successful businesses in other areas of magic. These businesses allow us to not completely rely on the income from "Tenyo Elite", and also let us take our time (as we are doing now) if we have to. We don't want to do it this way, but given the state of the world and the lack of support from some in the magic world, this is something that is a reality for us right now. If you want to see the new tricks come out faster, then please support us----this is basic economics. If you cannot support us, then we respectfully ask you to be patient while we sell more of our stock during this economic crisis.

Please let us know if you have any questions. Thank you for your time.

Best regards,

Jason Palter
Paltergeist Unlimited / Tenyo Elite
(416) 410-5766

That seems reasonable enough Jason.Things are indeed difficult at the moment.Many thanks for updating us as to the grounded realities of the situation.

My feeling is that some magicians are politely hinting (and some not so politely!)that it might have been better in hindsight to have started with two more interesting releases from the oft. Whilst there is indeed no pleasing everyone there are a few that the consensus would undoubtedly go for.

For example say you had released as your first two products an elite version of 'Crystal Cleaver' and 'Eclipse'(or even Diabolicus or Eye of the Idol).I suspect that in these circumstances that you might not have had problems to the same extent with respect to both sales and in creating the income for further releases.I guess however that the problem might lie in finding a craftsman able to rise to the challenge with respect to the manufacture of such items from the Tenyo range???

Like many other magicians I wish the enterprise the very best.The idea behind the venture is admirable and does undoubtedly have much potential.Good luck to you.

With best wishes Andy.

I'm Tenyo collector addict, I have more than 160 Tenyo tricks, you can see my blog here :
http://tenyo-magic.blogspot.com/

I have spend many time to make this blog and I have spend lot of money to complete my collection. But I did not purchase any product of "Elite" and I think I do not buy the two that are not coming unfortunately ...

Is not a question of price but rather a problem of choice of the effect. The version of "Fortune Sticks" produced by Tenyo is already perfect and very good quality, so there is very little value added to the version "Elite".
Moonspinner is an odd choice as an old-fashioned optical illusion, nothing really exciting...

I think you chose these two because this is probably the tricks that need to cost the least expensive to produce and for a start it is important to minimize the risk of failure.
But it is also a miscalculation because Tenyo is better known and loved for its tricks made from complex and ingenious mechanism. And those are the tricks that people dreamed of seeing in Elite version.

To be successful it would have to choose the best tricks and most ingenious of the Tenyo line like :
Side track, Sandwich platter, Crystal clever, Mobile illusion, Eyes of the idol, parabox, mira metal, The Ninja Experiment, Match sticks, Billscape, squeeze play, Ultra Tube, Crystal Pyramid, geometrick, ultraslice, wonderwindow...

I really think you made the worst possible choice. And I am the first disappointment.
I wish you courage and hope for the future with all my heart that you will have the opportunity to finally product the best Tenyo in Elite version.

See you. And thank you for and thank you for your courage to do this super idea.