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Tremble

Magician Anonymous

(Based on 2 reviews)
Technology today is at its peak in amazing feats and is only getting more impressive, so it's hard to sway the average heckler with a simple snap change. When technology can do so many extraordinary things, how do you make people open their eyes in disbelief at something?

All that is about to change, as Tremble will cause your audience members to do a double take in amazement. You will be able to make any prediction, drawing, or ink slowly appear and vibrate on a card with no sleight of hand - as if the ink had a mind of its own. There are no flaps, magnets, angles, or thick cards to worry about. It's a single card that you can then hand out later.

Be ready for the new generation of visual magic.

Be ready for us.

We are Magician Anonymous.

Reviews

Stuart Philip

Official Reviewer

Jan 22, 2023

Overview

Tremble is a gimmick that permits the performer to reveal a card by showing a card back and then - out of the blue - ink appears on the back of a card, it shakes, or vibrates, or trembles - and then shows that it was the chosen card. For example, the spectator picks the Queen of Hearts. The card is lost back in the deck and the performer removes the Joker, turns it around so the back is on display and then a black ink letter "Q" and letter "H" instantly appear at the performer's will.

This is more of a social media trick - or if you are going to do this reveal in front of live people, you will need to be in a dimmer room and ideally have a few feet distance from anyone's eyeballs.

For $30 bucks you get an 11 minute instructional DVD that teaches you how to build the gimmick if you want to, you get 2 gimmicks and you get some extra gimmick making stuff.

There is some arts and crafts which requires you to split a card and you will need other supplies to finish making the gimmicks that come with the trick.

Because of all the arts and crafts, the desire to not perform this in person and because it is really just a reveal, and because of the ad copy issues, I have given this product 2.5 stars.

Effect

The effect, as already described above is a reveal on the back of a playing card. At the magician's control, the reveal snaps into place, vibrates and the apparently moving ink finds a home on the back of a playing card.

Method

With the use of a gimmick that is mostly premade, you can have certain reveals ready to go. Caution, you cannot change the reveal on the fly so you will need to force what you will reveal.

Product Quality

The premade parts of the gimmicks are good. The instruction is fine. It is possible that the gimmick will break with overuse and I do not like making these types of gimmicks.

Ad Copy Integrity

The ad copy is a bit misleading because of the reference to technology. I actually thought the trick used some sort of technology, but it is really old school stuff that we all have been playing with for ages. Another misleading aspect is that you cannot hand out the reveal card as stated below. Well, you can, but you will need to employ a switch and that is not what the ad copy suggest. The complete ad copy states:

Technology today is at its peak in amazing feats and is only getting more impressive, so it's hard to sway the average heckler with a simple snap change. When technology can do so many extraordinary things, how do you make people open their eyes in disbelief at something?

All that is about to change, as Tremble will cause your audience members to do a double take in amazement. You will be able to make any prediction, drawing, or ink slowly appear and vibrate on a card with no sleight of hand - as if the ink had a mind of its own. There are no flaps, magnets, angles, or thick cards to worry about. It's a single card that you can then hand out later.

Be ready for the new generation of visual magic.

Be ready for us.

We are Magician Anonymous.
(Top ▲)

Doc Johnson

Official Reviewer

Aug 01, 2015

PROS

This is a clever idea, a slight variation of other very similar methods.

Unfortunately, the “cons” outweighed the “pros” for me.

CONS

From the beginning… through to the end, “magician anonymous” does the entire DVD in the most annoying fake voice that is distracting.

The DVD also left some gaps in the instruction, such as “force the card with your favorite method.” While many buyers will have their favorite force, others will not. They showed a force, but did not explain it. Everyone makes assumptions every day, but this is a bad assumption.

Even in the explanation of the handling, you could see how the gimmick isn’t totally reliable. At one point, the gimmick slipped away from the performer, showing the revelation too soon.

There was also a very brief demonstration of how to switch the gimmick card for an ungimmicked duplicate. The method demonstrated was not good and there was no explanation of how to do the entire performance from setup to end with this method.

I don’t think this is suitable for close-up, unless you are in a noisy area, as the participants would hear something and associate it with the movement and ruin the magic.

The entire DVD was less than 11 minutes long. The demo video shows several uses of the gimmick, but they are not all explained in detail. I think you can probably figure out how to do some that were not covered by watching the method, but they were not explained.

VERDICT

Nice idea, but the idea was not worked out sufficiently. The DVD is only 11 minutes long with very poor and incomplete explanations. Also, probably the best application for this gimmick, changing one card value to another, was not explained at all.

(Top ▲)