On this week's Wizard Product Review with David Penn & Sean Heydon:

Exquisite by Michael Ammar and Losander

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Rise by Sean Scott

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Sweet Penetration by Jibrizy Taylor

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Nice Show ! I like when Sean & Dave perform the effect you can really view the effect without all the Hooplah !! Sweet Penetration looks Sweet . I may be wrong here but I have a hunch it's exactly what you see ... Coin tossed in the Sugar pack I like It !

What I meant is I wish they would perform the effect with the Review !

The days of dealers demonstrating magic is over, for the most part. Customers have demanded demonstrations on video, and the manufacturers have complied by providing them.

Let's be sensible, why should a dealer learn a every new trick he carries, when he can just pull up the demo. This is not the 1970's. There were maybe on a good year, 10 to 20 new tricks. Most dealer's picked the ones they liked personally to sell. Then demonstrated them to customers. Now there is 20 or more tricks a day coming on the market. And for sales reasons they list all of them. There is no way, a person can learn that many tricks every day.

As for the Wizard Product Review show, they have said a number of times they come in early and watch the DVDs for the show that morning. There is no time to learn any of the tricks, unless it is very very easy to do. They give their educated thoughts and comments from their years of experience and other tricks on the market. They aren't paid, it is simply a promotion for the shop. Anyway, when Craig Petty demoed a trick, there were those that felt they had to critique his performance. A demo is not a performance, it only shows what the basic trick looks like, not polished and worked out trick. That is the job of the purchaser of the product.

Just like when you go to by a washing machine, the salesman does not have you bring in a load of cloths and washes them. He tells you the features and you make you decision. In the same way, a demo video shows you what the trick is, hopefully, and this is where the show comes in and gives their comments

So many magicians, watch a demo, then want to know if the trick can do things not in the demo video. The answer is always no, if it could they would show it doing so. If you want the trick to do something more, then it is not what you want.

Great points Bill but I don't get your last statement. When someone makes a demo video they have to decide what to show. They can't possibly show every routine and modification possible.

Magictricks.com still does old school dealer demos and I love it, no BS, loud music, some idiot dressed like a gothic hobo with girls in empty parking lots screaming etc. I am glad I still got old VHS tapes with straight demos of the tricks and no editing BS and bells and whistles just the TRICK straight up which is how it should be. The problem though is today they are not marketing to us long-time pros as much as they are to kids and beginners only looking for secrets. There is very little that I see that I can't figure out after 36 years in magic, or at least have a good idea how it is done. But I don't buy secrets I buy magic/entertainment pieces for my spectators.

Most of what I buy I already know the secret but I am not the audience. I can't count how many times that I seen a video where I just closed it out as I got tired of the BS and waiting to see the *** trick. Just show me the *** trick already! Would save me a TON of time as all those minutes of all that BS add up to a lot of wasted time.

Those are the same types of idiots who critiqued Craig's performance, any REAL magician knows that a demo is not a performance and anything that is great and worth learning can't be properly performed after being learned in an hour or (a half an hour ago). Great routines and performances take a lot of practice and rehearsal. They are looking for self-working pieces with no skill required yet expect them to astound and amaze all, and then be handed out to be fully examined while they sit back and take all of the credit. I am very glad that I come from the old school of book learning. I love DVDS too as they show the timing of a sleight, sample routines, patter, misdirection etc. But demos are just that DEMOS not full fledged performances.

If they don't do demos people complain about it, if they do a demo people complain that they "flashed" and did not practice enough. ***ed if you do ***ed if you don't. But us long-time pros appreciate any kind of demo and we don't give a crap about how well it was performed. The others though simply want to watch the demo over and over again and try to reverse engineer it. That is why magic is not as good on video as it is live, people just break one of the cardinal rules (never repeat a trick) by replaying it over and over again until they think they figured it out, then they post how ingenious they are.

Live magic in person is how magic should be, and people are more appreciative of it then as well as they can't just rewind it and look for the secret. Which is pointless and unimportant anyway, and most just want to be entertained but you got those types who only want to know how it was done. Also the camera does not blink, and a lot of the misdirection is lost. In real life you can't rewind and pause the show and that is a good thing. For me if I ever saw a trick that I had no clue how it was done I would savor that moment for as long as possible as it rarely happens anymore. Then I will get it if I can use it in my show. That is the price you pay for doing magic so long and for a living. But I can also watch magic as a layman as well which I learned to do long ago, and suspend my disbelief and critical eye to enjoy the show.

No, of course not, but it would be stated on the video, or text on screen or in the text ad, that other ideas were given.

I made this statement, because I constantly read posts of someone wants to know will it do something they think of, most of the time it is really out in left field. This happens constantly in the new products sections and the creator or inventor, or manufacturer hasn't even made any kind of appearance on the Café. And the person does not want to know if it is possible, but is it fully worked out for them.

Not logical thinking at all. A common one is, the deck only is provided in red backs, someone always say, they want it only in blue. So the think the manufacturer will stop the presses and make a blue deck just because the poster wants it. Really? There are even more ridiculous "wants" constantly made that are totally unreasonable desires.

So it is a heads up, that such requests or desires are totally not logical when a product is being shipped to wholesalers and dealers.