Price$19.95
Media TypeTrick
CategoryClose Up
Date AddedMar 15, 2007
Bubble Gum Magic - Volume 1
James Coats and Nicholas Byrd
(Based on 1 review)
Gum Through Window - A spectator chooses a pack of gum, then multiple packs of gum are thrown at a window. The spectator's chosen gum pack penetrates the window and ends up stuck to the other side.
Straight from the Factory - A spectator chooses a card from a deck and chooses a pack of gum from a sealed multi-pack. The spectator's card ends up in the un-opened, sealed pack of gum inside the sealed multi-pack.
Gum Through Window Combo - A combination of Gum through Window and Straight from the Factory.
Real Sticky Situation - A chewed piece of gum is taken from the magician's mouth, he shakes the chewed gum and it turns back into a new, un-wrapped stick of gum. Then the magician shakes the gum a final time to reveal a fully wrapped piece of gum that can be handed out and chewed.
Hot Pack - A pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit is shown and with the flick of the wrist, the pack turns into a pack of Wrigley's Big Red.
Sign Gum Transposition - A spectator and the magician sign separate packs of gum then both hold them tightly in their hands. When both the spectator and magician open their hands they find the signed packs have switched places.
Chewing Gum Change - The front and back of an old chewing gum wrapper are shown to a spectator. The wrapper is then folded and un-folded to reveal that is has changed into another type of gum. The magician rubs the gum wrapper and turns it into a new pack of gum which can be handed out.
Running Time Approximately 79min
Reviews
(Top ▲)
“This DVD will teach you step-by-step how to perform hard hitting illusions with bubble gum.” From the adcopy for “Bubble Gum Magic”
If you’ve been waiting for someone to repurpose other people’s sleights and tricks by applying them to bubble gum, your wait is over! “Bubble Gum Magic” is a two-disc set featuring 14 routines of the kind anyone with an intermediate knowledge of magic would likely devise if they were asked to do a trade show for Wrigley’s. That’s not to say all the tricks are bad, but there’s a lot of ideation here that clearly serves no purpose other than filling up these DVDs. For example, “Gum Through Window” is a plot that’s infinitely better with cards, and “Sign (sic) Gum Transposition” is stronger with coins, so unless you have a mandate from a client to “do tricks with gum,” there would be no reason to use these over their mainstream counterparts.
Similarly, “Hubba Bubba Huh” is merely a hoary cigar-band vanish employed with gum that you remove from your mouth and wrap around your fingertip (yuck!). And “Hot Pack” (a play on “Hot Rod”) is a color-changing pack of gum-sticks using the paddle move, but (unlike “Hot Rod”), it’s a one-note effect and doesn’t go anywhere interesting.
Along the same lines, “Straight from the Factory” is NOT a vanish and reappearance of a spectator’s card in a chosen pack of gum as stated on the DVD cover. A spectator “chooses” a card, then the magician shuffles it back into the deck. He tries to find the card twice and fails, then hands the spectator a sealed pack of gum (the pack can also be forced via equivoque, as it is in one of the three performances). Upon being opened, the gum-pack is found to contain a folded card that matches the selection. Unfortunately, given that the selection is neither signed nor shown to have vanished from the deck (I’ll take one or the other), it’s far from certain that the spectators will assume the card in the gum is the one they chose.
And now, from the pointless to the useless. “Mercury Gum Box” is a folded-card-in-shoe style signed-card-to-gum-box - the kind of box with no lid that holds a dozen (sometimes two dozen) packs of gum for display. Every question this plot brings to mind just raises more questions. Why the hell would you make a card travel to the bottom of a gum box?!? When the hell would you make a card travel to the bottom of a gum box?!? Where the hell would you make a card travel to the bottom of a gum box?!? Who the hell would make a card travel to the bottom of a gum box?!?
There are also some missed opportunities on these DVDs. For example, in “Bubble Gum Matrix,” four cubes of gum and two cards are used, but the cards aren’t placed on the gum, they’re held vertically (in landscape orientation) in front of the relevant cubes preceding each vanish and reappearance. The trick doesn’t look bad, but this would have been an excellent chance to perform a David Merry/Jay Sankey/David Ben-style elevated Matrix, typically done with cards and dice. Alternatively, I’d be inclined to scrap the cards entirely and just perform S. Leo Horowitz’s “Malini-Bey Chink a Chink,” from Stars of Magic. Also, for a compilation of this sort, why not collect a few previously published gum tricks, like Richard Sanders’ “Trident Sugarless Bill” (from Close-Up Assassin), Aaron Fisher’s “Eleanor Wrigley” (from The Sleight Album), or Jay Sankey’s “Forbidden Fruit” (from Sankey Unleashed)?
On the other hand, there are two tricks here that struck me as having some potential, but each of these is beset with problems as well. “Chewing Gum Change” starts out as a self-contained bill-change with an empty and open gum wrapper (it morphs from Juicy Fruit to Big Red), then the wrapper is transformed into a new pack of gum. It may sound okay on paper, but the method leaves something to be desired, most notably how (and when) one is expected to steal out the pack of gum from a pocket to effect the change. And “Real Sticky Situation” is an impromptu version of Andy Leviss’s marketed “Sticky Situation” wherein the magician takes a chewed piece of gum from his mouth and transforms it into a new, unwrapped stick of gum, then, with a wave of his hand, causes the wrapper to appear around it. If you perform for audiences who wouldn’t mind seeing you take gum out of your mouth and handle it between your fingers, you could try this as is. Personally, I would be more inclined to apparently take a ball of dried gum from beneath a table, then reconstitute it into a new piece, then a newly wrapped piece. Either way, while the changes look fine, you’re left pretty dirty at the conclusion, making the effect impractical. You could of course ditch all the hidden gum (some of which has already been chewed) by shoving it in your mouth, but the second you start talking again, the jig would be up.
Apart from these methodological and/or theatrical issues, the DVDs are awash with technical problems. The performance segments were shot in front of a candy store in a mall using only the camera mic, so the sound is awful (there’s echo and an enormous amount of background chatter). In addition, the lighting is too hot for many of the performance segments, and often washes out the objects in play to such a degree that the effect is completely invisible. In other words, we frequently have to rely on either a declaration from the performer or the reaction of a spectator to know that a trick has happened. Moreover, it is abundantly evident from both their performance and technique that neither James nor Nicholas is comfortable doing any of these tricks.
Having said all that, there is one fully-formed routine on Volume II called “Eclipse” that deserves a better forum - a spectator pops two pieces of gum out from a blister pack, then the pack is instantly (if not visibly) restored. The method is both simple and effective.
I guess it comes down to this - if any of these tricks strike you as “hard hitting illusions with bubble gum,” then by all means pick up the DVDs. And if it sells well, keep an eye out for my upcoming DVD set, a two-volume collection of deep and enchanting mysteries with snot.
David Acer
If you’ve been waiting for someone to repurpose other people’s sleights and tricks by applying them to bubble gum, your wait is over! “Bubble Gum Magic” is a two-disc set featuring 14 routines of the kind anyone with an intermediate knowledge of magic would likely devise if they were asked to do a trade show for Wrigley’s. That’s not to say all the tricks are bad, but there’s a lot of ideation here that clearly serves no purpose other than filling up these DVDs. For example, “Gum Through Window” is a plot that’s infinitely better with cards, and “Sign (sic) Gum Transposition” is stronger with coins, so unless you have a mandate from a client to “do tricks with gum,” there would be no reason to use these over their mainstream counterparts.
Similarly, “Hubba Bubba Huh” is merely a hoary cigar-band vanish employed with gum that you remove from your mouth and wrap around your fingertip (yuck!). And “Hot Pack” (a play on “Hot Rod”) is a color-changing pack of gum-sticks using the paddle move, but (unlike “Hot Rod”), it’s a one-note effect and doesn’t go anywhere interesting.
Along the same lines, “Straight from the Factory” is NOT a vanish and reappearance of a spectator’s card in a chosen pack of gum as stated on the DVD cover. A spectator “chooses” a card, then the magician shuffles it back into the deck. He tries to find the card twice and fails, then hands the spectator a sealed pack of gum (the pack can also be forced via equivoque, as it is in one of the three performances). Upon being opened, the gum-pack is found to contain a folded card that matches the selection. Unfortunately, given that the selection is neither signed nor shown to have vanished from the deck (I’ll take one or the other), it’s far from certain that the spectators will assume the card in the gum is the one they chose.
And now, from the pointless to the useless. “Mercury Gum Box” is a folded-card-in-shoe style signed-card-to-gum-box - the kind of box with no lid that holds a dozen (sometimes two dozen) packs of gum for display. Every question this plot brings to mind just raises more questions. Why the hell would you make a card travel to the bottom of a gum box?!? When the hell would you make a card travel to the bottom of a gum box?!? Where the hell would you make a card travel to the bottom of a gum box?!? Who the hell would make a card travel to the bottom of a gum box?!?
There are also some missed opportunities on these DVDs. For example, in “Bubble Gum Matrix,” four cubes of gum and two cards are used, but the cards aren’t placed on the gum, they’re held vertically (in landscape orientation) in front of the relevant cubes preceding each vanish and reappearance. The trick doesn’t look bad, but this would have been an excellent chance to perform a David Merry/Jay Sankey/David Ben-style elevated Matrix, typically done with cards and dice. Alternatively, I’d be inclined to scrap the cards entirely and just perform S. Leo Horowitz’s “Malini-Bey Chink a Chink,” from Stars of Magic. Also, for a compilation of this sort, why not collect a few previously published gum tricks, like Richard Sanders’ “Trident Sugarless Bill” (from Close-Up Assassin), Aaron Fisher’s “Eleanor Wrigley” (from The Sleight Album), or Jay Sankey’s “Forbidden Fruit” (from Sankey Unleashed)?
On the other hand, there are two tricks here that struck me as having some potential, but each of these is beset with problems as well. “Chewing Gum Change” starts out as a self-contained bill-change with an empty and open gum wrapper (it morphs from Juicy Fruit to Big Red), then the wrapper is transformed into a new pack of gum. It may sound okay on paper, but the method leaves something to be desired, most notably how (and when) one is expected to steal out the pack of gum from a pocket to effect the change. And “Real Sticky Situation” is an impromptu version of Andy Leviss’s marketed “Sticky Situation” wherein the magician takes a chewed piece of gum from his mouth and transforms it into a new, unwrapped stick of gum, then, with a wave of his hand, causes the wrapper to appear around it. If you perform for audiences who wouldn’t mind seeing you take gum out of your mouth and handle it between your fingers, you could try this as is. Personally, I would be more inclined to apparently take a ball of dried gum from beneath a table, then reconstitute it into a new piece, then a newly wrapped piece. Either way, while the changes look fine, you’re left pretty dirty at the conclusion, making the effect impractical. You could of course ditch all the hidden gum (some of which has already been chewed) by shoving it in your mouth, but the second you start talking again, the jig would be up.
Apart from these methodological and/or theatrical issues, the DVDs are awash with technical problems. The performance segments were shot in front of a candy store in a mall using only the camera mic, so the sound is awful (there’s echo and an enormous amount of background chatter). In addition, the lighting is too hot for many of the performance segments, and often washes out the objects in play to such a degree that the effect is completely invisible. In other words, we frequently have to rely on either a declaration from the performer or the reaction of a spectator to know that a trick has happened. Moreover, it is abundantly evident from both their performance and technique that neither James nor Nicholas is comfortable doing any of these tricks.
Having said all that, there is one fully-formed routine on Volume II called “Eclipse” that deserves a better forum - a spectator pops two pieces of gum out from a blister pack, then the pack is instantly (if not visibly) restored. The method is both simple and effective.
I guess it comes down to this - if any of these tricks strike you as “hard hitting illusions with bubble gum,” then by all means pick up the DVDs. And if it sells well, keep an eye out for my upcoming DVD set, a two-volume collection of deep and enchanting mysteries with snot.
David Acer