Tru Test - U.F. Grant's Modern Magazine Test
Kranzo, Nathan
Nathan Kranzo
- No Pre Show Work.
- No Sleight of hand of any kind.
- No switches.
- No glimpsing.
- No stooges.
- No gimmicks you have to palm.
- Volunteer can be on the other side of the room when you reveal their word!
- No electronics.
- Gimmicks Won't Break!
- May be repeated!!!
Several pages are torn out of a current TIME magazine. A random page is chosen and handed to a volunteer. From then on you never handle the page. You ask the volunteer to TEAR the page in half and discard a piece dropping it to the floor. They continue to tear and discard pieces of the page until only a small piece remains. They can even CHANGE THEIR MIND AND exchange their final piece for ANY piece on the ground. The volunteer can now look at either side of the piece and and just THINK of a word. You can be blindfolded or across the room and tell them the word with 100% accuracy.
This is the real work on the magazine test. Period.
Once again. They have a choice of pages..........Having the entire freedom to look at either side of the page and think of ANY word is amazing. You can even CALL THEM FROM ANOTHER ROOM and tell them THEIR WORD OVER THE PHONE!!!
The best part is its SO EASY.
You will be able to perform it INSTANTLY.
When you purchase the TRU TEST Magazine Test KIT you will receive the instruction manual detailing routines, bonus ideas and all the nuances about the test.
You will receive 100 gimmicks that can be used OVER and over. Unless you destroy the gimmick in performance (you can destroy the gimmick as part of the routine if you'd like but it is totally up to YOU........you don't have to........you can use it over and over if you'd like). SO this will provide you with enough for WELL over 100 performances.
Reviews
(Top ▲)
Let’s look at only the page that I must slip into the magazine. It looks great. At first glance this will easily pass for a commercial magazine page. But, if you have someone read it, even a couple of lines, as the instructions say, you could be in trouble.
Here is an example of a couple of sentences on the page:
“We we go there he had left his refrigerator open.” And “The Jellyfish and all the kangaroo on the road came from the lightning from a few days ago.”
(The grammatical errors as written are on the page.)
In the first paragraph there are two grammatical errors and they continue throughout the page. It might easily give one pause when reading through this to select a word.
If you only present this to your family, friends, and the occasional public show, you will probably be fine. If you plan on presenting this over and over again in a working show, you will need to be keenly aware of the technical problems within this clumsily produced page. It could come back to bite you.
I read Jeff Stone’s review and my copy of this trick has the same problems. I can’t disagree with Jeff’s review, however, I would give it a couple of more stars as I think one could muddle through this trick as produced. The problem is . . . we didn’t need to, as the problems were not in the method but in the production of the trick itself.
Jeff, in his review, mentioned that (as the advertising copy says) you can pick any word on the page. You cannot. This can be a point of contention for some people who purchase the trick as there are methods that do allow you to literally pick any word on the page. Perhaps a picky point for most…but not for all.
There is another issue with this trick, however, I prefer not to discuss as it might give away the method. It’s not that the method doesn’t work, it’s simply clumsily employed in this product. That could result in a difficult time for the performer if they select a sharp eyed spectator.
The high price tag makes one believe that this should have been a much better produced product.
(Top ▲)
This effect is an extremely clever idea - Typical Kranzo
The production quality is horrible - Typical Kranzo
I love the guy. He's funny, extremely smart and has a ton of great ideas. However, in most cases, the Kranzo products I've reviewed end up having severe production quality issues. Unfortunately in the case of this particular effect, the production quality problems make the effect unusable.
The production issues start on the packaging (but don't stop there). On the back cover, we are given a brief history of the effect. As Kranzo points out, it was created by U.F. Grant 80 ish years ago. It has inspired many variations, including "Flashback by Larry Beck and Lee Earl." Notice that both names are spelled wrong. It's Larry Becker and Lee Earle with an "E" at the end.
Obviously, this gross error does not mean the effect is unworkable. Or does it? It's a warning sign and evidence of the lack of effort that seems to have gone into the production of this product.
Unfortunately, some of the errors I cannot point out in this review without exposing the secret. I will do my best to keep the method on the down-low while keeping the problems on the up-high(?)
The instructions are 2 pages long and 100 duplicate pages of a magazine page that you secretly slip into a copy of Newsweek or Time Magazine. The pages are gimmicked in such a way that you can have the spectator pick any word (long word - think MOABT) and you can read their mind. The instructions mention the word "Railroad" as being a keyword on the bottom of one of the pages . . . it's not there. In fact, "Railroad" is the wrong "R" word (this makes more sense if you know the method).
The instructions tell you to have the person point to any section on the page and start reading it to herself for a moment . . . yeah . . . that's not gonna work. First of all, there are repeated typos and grammar and sentence structure errors riddled throughout both sides of the gimmicked sheet. Any spectator reading just one sentence anywhere on the page will immediately know that this is clearly not something written by pros at Newsweek or Time Magazine.
For Example, here's a sentence from the sheet: "That was the first time our quarterback"
Yep . . . it just ends there with no period at the end. It happens to be at the bottom of the first column of the page, so the natural thing to do is go to the top of the next column to find the rest of the sentence, but nope. You end up with this "Then we went to the farmhouse which had a grasshopper den in each room. When the hurricane came thru with the full intercourse it made all the jellyfish wash up on shore. We all saw a kangaroo die which was very sad."
Honestly, does that sound like something you would read in Time magazine on a page that has the header "Technology" boldly printed at the top of page? There are cases of words smashed together (thespace is missing betweenthem). Due to the method of the effect, the errors are repeated in several places on both sides of the page. Anywhere on the page that the spectator stops to read will make no sense whatsoever and will either tip the method at worst or leave the spectator feeling like something was very fishy with that page at best.
If I were grading the idea, I'd give it a 4 or better star. In fact the magazine sheets and instructions are beautifully printed and look really good and would pass for the real thing if the spectator didn't have to read the words on the page. But as it is, I cannot recommend this. Sorry folks. I was going to give it a 1 star verdict, but with an asking price of $100 for something so poorly produced, I can't even do that. I was then going to give it a half star, but then I realized that the ad copy is misleading and the video demo is very misleading.
Kranzo says, they can look at the page and think of ANY word, and you just tell them what it is. That is NOT true. It cannot be ANY word on the page. And you must know one piece of information before revealing the word. The one piece of information can ONLY be gained by pumping or guessing.
Final Verdict:
Zero Stars with a Stone Status of Complete and Utter Rubble.