Last week I was going through my bag of props/effects, and pulled this out again. I'd only performed it once or twice-and one spectator actually guessed the m.o. rather quickly. I still like the premise, and am taking it out to show again, to see if it's worth using on a more regular basis.
Anyone who shops at stores like Walgreen's, or, actually any store these days, will run into products that have that familiar tag/phrase, 'as seen on t.v.!'. The implication is that if it made it to t.v....well then you've GOTTA buy it!
Royal Fantasy is marketed with the same tag, and Harry Anderson's name, but I'm not easily swayed by that. Television vs. live closeup performance can be two different animals. Plus, there are countless effects that are strong that never made it t.v., or were never performed by 'household name' t.v. stars.
I'll now get to what I consider to be a misrepresentation of this effect, right there on the point of sales, or packaging. The photo of the card fan, shows four DIFFERENT KINGS. That, is NOT how the effect looks, when you open it up and do it. You get 4 spot cards, and ONE KING, with windows in it to accommodate the spots. The actual color, nature of the king does NOT change, which clearly contradicts the photo used to promote this effect. If four slightly DIFFERENT kings all disappeared, that would be a cool trick. Instead, contrast only appears with the changing spots,
Royal Fantasy is based on a Brother John Hamman effect. Lubor Fiedler's clever version of this trick, eliminates the need to ditch a card at finish. Carrying this effect is tricky, because of what's needed to hold two cards together. This 'something' needs to be covered, so that it doesn't stick to the interior of your wallet. Then, it needs to be peeled off before you do the trick.
The actual king/gimmick is somewhat crudely cut, and I took a black marker to certain edges to make the windows more invisible.
The cards themselves are not easily found, when they get dirty or wear out.
Another contradiction (of card design), is that the faces look like antique cards from the days of King Arthur. The backs however, are camouflaged with a contemporary Escher-esque pattern. This hides the sin, but is not what the backs of OLD playing cards look like.
Finally, the effect itself, doesn't have that much of a plot to me. You hand the spectator four kings-and wind up short changing him/her so to speak, as they wind up with four spot cards. It's like a quick sucker novelty. Having say, low valued cards change into high value ones, is more positively directed I think.
I use court cards to tell stories with, and this naturally asks spectators to empathize with the characters. Royal Fantasy, would need quite a bit more of a story-because aside from 'where did the kings go?' surprise-why would anyone care where they went? Large cards that can only perform this one trick, makes this hard to integrate into what all else I have in my pockets-or, do with cards. Maybe that's why it's been in a prop bag...and not a resident of my packet trick wallet.