New Magic Reviews
New Magic Products
Official Review |
| Rating: |
| Reviewed by
Bryce Kuhlman |
Jerry Andrus was one of the first magicians I ever saw lecture. I was probably about 12 years old at the time. One of the things I fell in love with was Zone Zero. I've used the basic idea in several routines through the years.
Now Steve Shufton has taken the idea, made it a bit smaller, and added an extra bit of work that allows you to do more and make existing moves easier and cleaner.
The product comes with the "Portal", five crochet balls (red, green, yellow and two white), a plastic card with a red dot on one side and a green dot on the other, and the instructional DVD.
The props are of decent quality, though mine wasn't exactly a finely-machined piece of equipment. I think a slight different choice of construction materials could have made a difference. And with some minor modifications, the whole thing could have been thinner. But these are just my preferences. The props will do just fine for the intended tasks.
The instructions come from David Regal, one of my favorite magicians. It starts with some background on the prop and a note from David that this is an instructional DVD and won't contain all of those fancy effects we have to sit through in most magic DVDs these days (thank you!).
The DVD includes a whole mess of interesting routines. The balls appear, vanish and change colors. The themes are strange and wonderful (time travel, parallel universes, etc.). One of my personal favorites uses the Portal as a vending machine.
Granted, it's a strange prop. But it's a strange prop that does strange things. It can be examined and appears to be something quite ordinary, even if we've never seen anything like it before.
Of course, like Zone Zero and so many other props, the uses for this are only as limited as your imagination. |
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