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Details

Chapswitch

Lawrence, Nicholas

SansMinds Productionz

(Based on 1 review)
Imagine rolling up a bill into a little tube, changing it into a small chapstick with just a little shake.

Visual magic happens inches away from your spectator's eyes. Borrowed bill Borrowed chapstick Works with any currency Use any brand of chapstick Gimmick includedNote: TV rights not included with purchase. Please contact SansMinds for TV rights.

Reviews

Dr. J. M. Ayala De Cedoz

Official Reviewer

Feb 11, 2018

This is quite the visual change from a bill to a chapstick but is it strong enough to be done on its own? We shall find out...

What you get here is a DVD with some material to make the necessary gimmicks. The DVD is very well produced with great video, lighting and audio quality. The menu is easy to navigate and the teaching on this DVD is good.

The first thing you have to ask yourself, as with any other magic effect/1-trick DVD that you buy: Do you have a need for it? If you really think you will find yourself needing to change a bill into a chapstick or any other similarly sized and shaped item, you might like this and it will do the job.

The chapstick is organic but this effect does have some limitations. It cannot be done surrounded and it cannot be done extremely close up to your audience. The ad copy says the change happens just inches away from the eyes of your audience - not really. You will probably need to be about 3-4 feet away so that the gimmick will not be seen after the change from the bill to the chapstick - Herman even tells you this in the instructional part of the DVD.

The ad copy says that you can use a borrowed bill, a borrowed chapstick, that is words with any currency and any brand of chapstick; this is all true. If you watch the ad trailer you will see exactly the way it looks in real time - it really is that visual.

The gimmick is not hard to make and should take you less than five minutes to make it. The effect is not hard to do but it will take some practice as it uses one of the "common" or "standard" moves in magic, only it is a round object so you have to know where to stop the 'move'. Not hard to do, it just takes practice. Herman does a good job of taking you through the making of the gimmick and the handling of the effect, and this time leaves nothing to be desired.

You can borrow a bill for this and have it signed if you like, or you can use your own. Either way the bill has to be rolled into a tube about the size of a chapstick (or whatever other similar object you are changing it into), and you have to take care to get the size of the rolled bill right. Otherwise you will end up with a noticeable (and unintended) extra effect - the rolled up bill will change size before it turns into the chapstick. There is a rather fiddly looking move that you have to do after you roll up the bill, but if you are being casual about what you are doing it should fly past most people. Either that or you have to find a different way to do this particular move.

As for the change, it is easy to do and the clean-up is just as easy. I mentioned before already that you can change the bill into another object that is of similar size/shape to a chapstick (a roll of mints, a glue stick, etc.) and you can, but depending on what that object is you may have to make your own gimmick material in order for it to better fit that object. The gimmick material that comes with the DVD (you get three) will fit chapsticks just fine.

For $24.95 (which is a bit high even for this) you could still do worse. When you see the method you might well be disappointed, however, if you like the visual nature of this piece and do not mind putting in a little work to come up with a better move to replace the fiddly one, I think you will like this if you have a use for it. It is not earth-shattering but it would make an interesting interlude piece.

3 stars.
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