Just saw an advertisement for this on http://www.hocus-pocus.com and was wondering is this any good? It's only $10.95 and seems to be loaded with effects but I admit the sale description is very vague. I've had good luck with many of AM's other material and was just wondering what to expect from this one.

I ordered it about 11-ish days ago. He said it would be here early this week. I'm hoping it arrives today. I'll give a review then.

Brian

Looking forward to your review Brian and thanks for responding!

It still hasn't arrived. Mayne said that there was a malfunction at the printing company, but that was almost two weeks ago. At least I have something to look forward to.

Brian

I got it. Not too impressed. It looked like mainly stuff for kids. Breaking a pencil with a dollar bill, etc. There was a few neat effects, but overall I wasn't too impressed.

Brian

Any additional comments on this book?

Okay, I’ll add a few comments. Much like Brian, I was not particularly impressed with the effects in the book, as they seemed to be geared toward kids. Here’s a sampling of effects from the book (there are 23 total-these are just a few):
•Bending a Penny—self-explanatory.
•Mind Probe—mental effect with numbers.
•Spider Cling—a soda can clings to your hand.
•Freeze Touch—magician pours some water into a cup and hold the cup tightly in his (or her) hand. After a moment, the magician turns the cup over and dumps out a ball of ice.
•PK Ultra—a pencil on the table moves without being touched (doesn’t use IT or magnets).
•Web Shooter—not so much a trick as it is “a cool way to catch people by surprise by making it look like you can shoot webs from your hands.”
•Wall Crawler—magician appears to be clinging to a doorway.

As I mentioned, I was not very impressed with the effects overall, however some of them were decent, and made me think. My favorites are Freeze Touch, The Human Volcano (a quick little trick to make soda erupt from its bottle like a volcano), and Super Smell (spectators draw a symbol on a piece of paper and magician correctly matches papers to spectators using “super smell”). Spider Cling is not bad, either. One thing I did like about this book, and some science teachers may find it useful, are short, often science-related, bits of information after each effect. For example, after Freeze Touch, Mayne talks about how we constantly give off heat and how thermal imagers can tell where someone walks in a room and what they touch by looking for the heat left behind. Heat transfer is what causes burns, etc. Being a former science teacher myself, I think some of these effects, combined with the science “super secrets” would have made for some fun class time. Overall, I would say that this book would be useful for younger children just beginning in magic, and some science teachers, particularly elementary and middle school teachers. High school, maybe not so much, but for around $11-$12, maybe it’s worth a look. If anyone has any further questions, feel free to PM me.

Brandon

As a side note, I will say that this book got me to thinking about different ways of presenting magic. Super Smell is actually a common effect found in beginning magic books as a mental effect, but Mayne presents it in the context of using superhuman smell instead of psychic power. After all, the spectators do handle the paper quite a bit in drawing their symbol. Why not try to extract the smell they leave behind using your super sense? Some might think it ridiculous, but it made me think about other ways to present some old tricks…