There are magic props that look like they were created to make a trick work, and don’t exist in real life. The TV Card Frame magic trick where a card appears between two pieces of glass is one of those tricks.
Recently at a junk shop I saw a picture frame that I’m guessing is what the TV Card Frame is trying to look like:
I’m always amazed that these things that look strange to me, but were created long before I was born, were designed to sort of look like things that existed in real life back then.
I wonder what props that look like everyday items now won’t look like anything people will have interact 40 years from now?
These are the props that are in my hands or pockets when I walk onstage. This is for a 90 minute theater show.
The paper will have a person’s name under “congrats”, but that will be filled in right before showtime. The paper goes in the envelope, and that, along with the mic, goes in my hands. Everything else is in a pocket or under my coat.
I will say that switching from putting the ball in my back pocket to a ball dropper to steal the tennis ball is a game changer for me! I use it in my Stand Up Chop Cup routine (from my 2025 lecture notes). The steal is cleaner, with less motion and I don’t have a lumpy butt for half my show!
Personally, I have a love/hate relationship with magic props that use electronics. There’s so much that can go wrong, and when it does, how do you still do the routine? For me, I usually run two different methods at the same time and can switch from the cleaner/easier electronic method to the analog method instantly.
I’ve got a bit in my new show that uses an electronic magic prop, and the easiest solution to it failing is to have a second one running at the same time!
I do have a third backup method that’s analog; however, the more efficient way is two of the electronic gimmicks.
With magic methods moving towards apps, and electronic gimmicks, I think it’s important to look at your show and figure out where the potential failure points are for tech and how you would deal with them when it happens.
When I host a variety show, I try to do as little of my formal material as possible. I do have a lot of material ready to be used, however I try to make the show not about my act…unless I have a scheduled spot in the show.
Here’s my MC props from a gig a couple weeks ago:
Of those props, I only did my routine with the Evaporation gimmick and there were 13 acts in the show, so I was on stage a lot! Luckily, the transitions were pretty tight, and there were a lot of announcements that needed to be done, so that gave me things to fill transitions.
I also did things like interview someone from the audience:
…and fed a guy licorice out of my mouth!
Both of these things were spontaneous and really created fun energy for the show. I always try to find things that take me out of my box and to create a show that’s unique to the people who are in the audience at that specific show that they know they’ll never see again!
That’s why people go see live entertainment, to be a part of a unique experience!
The opening magic trick in my magic show has been a quick trick where juice turns into confetti, then the cup turns into a streamer. It’s a great flash trick, but right now I’m playing with a different opener. I’m starting to use my stand up chop cup routine as the opening trick for my outdoor magic show.
The pros of this chop cup style routine as an opener are that it has a lot of magic that happens without a lot of preamble. It gets into the magic quickly. Then the trick has a great payoff with the production of a tennis ball.
The downside is that while the ball in the routine is a yellow ball, it’s small. Ideally, I’d like something visually larger as the first trick in the show, but for now this is working…
Last week, my magic show did 12 shows at a fair in California. When I was packing to go there, I took a picture of all the consumable stuff in my magic show. This is stuff that isn’t reusable and I have to replace each show or every few shows:
It feels like a lot of stuff, and it kinda is when you’re seeing 12 shows worth of stuff, plus a couple of back ups. For a single show, it’s not a lot. The nice thing about having stuff that gets used up in the show is that my case going home is a little bit lighter!
About five years ago, I used a torn and restored newspaper as the closer to a show. I used Nick Lewin’s Slow Motion Paper Tear, and it got great responses. Someone in a Facebook group asked about a newspaper tear that gives you clean edges on the tear. In my experience with the trick getting a clean tear is a combination of the grain/quality of the newspaper and just doing it a lot. The more you do it, the easier it is to get a clean tear.
That’s not really what this post is about, it’s about using a newspaper. Look below to see multiple people mention newspapers not being common:
Yes, I agree a newspaper isn’t common, but they still exist. Just about every grocery store in the USA still sells them. Here’s a list of things magician use that they consider “everyday objects” but I think aren’t:
Dollar bills
Coins
Handkerchiefs
Playing cards
Pencil
Breast pocket size wallets
Records
CD
All of those things still exist in the world, but the average person probably interacts with them about the same as a newspaper. I can’t think of the last time I held a pencil or handkerchief that wasn’t magic related. I hardly use cash anymore, and outside of a magic context, I’d say its been years since I would have touched playing cards.
It’s all about context, people still know what a newspaper is, they just might not have physically touched one recently. I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t use one based on how often people see them, but it’s not a strange object. A silver dollar is more strange than a newspaper.
That said, the first line of the newspaper tear when I did it was a joke explaining what a newspaper is.
Let’s start by me saying I think most omni magic tricks are the result of lazy creativity. I’ve written at least one blog post about that in the past. What most omni magic tricks lack is something more than just the object becoming clear.
Ok, that all being said, I came across a set of small plastic folding chairs and one of the color options was clear.
There were four colors of chairs: Black, pink, blue and clear. I bought one of each. These stand about 5 inches tall. My first idea was some sort of chair test with them. My current idea is this:
Three tiny chairs are shown:
One of the three chairs is freely selected and put into a handkerchief that’s folded into a bag. You snap your fingers and pull out a ribbon/silk that is the color of the chair you put into the handkerchief. Then you remove the chair, and it’s now clear, and the handkerchief is shown empty.
There’s not much to it, but a bit more meat than just “hold this…now it’s clear” like in so many omni magic tricks. This routine is more like Dr. Boris Zola’s Silver Extraction routine. I do like the selection of a color as it adds a layer to it.
The Jumbo Tom Foolery Transformation is a series of changes of four playing cards. One at a time, the cards flip over, then the backs change color, then the faces change.
The challenge with this is that you use the same move 13 times in the routine. I think this routine was originally done with poker sized cards, but then someone decided to sell it in jumbo size to have an additional product to sell. The move doesn’t really lend itself to the jumbo cards, especially with the provided thick 8082 Bicycle Cards!
I came up with a different handling, the move still has to be done 13 times, but I think it makes more sense with jumbo cards. Here it is with my move:
Recently I saw a social media post about someone trying to come up with magic with eyeballs.
In the post, the list a few trick ideas which include: -zombie eyeball -sponge eyeballs The thing is that all of those have been done…I don’t mean that those tricks have been themed with eyeballs before (they have), they’re things that exist as a trick. When creating, why not go beyond your “magic vocabulary” and create something new, or at least try?
Here are a few ideas:
Plastic Eyeball and plastic letter “I” switch places.
Plastic eyeball turns into a plastic letter “I”
You take your eyeball out of your face, it changes into a letter “i” and you put that back into your eye socket and instead of your eye, it’s the letter “i”. Method would use a contact with an i printed on it?
You make a circle of objects on the table and one is selected. You have a plastic eyeball and spin it around, when it stops spinning it’s looking at the selected item
Your hands are shown empty. You then take a bottle of eye drops a put a drop into your palm. You close your hand and when you open it an eyeball has appeared.
You have a plastic eye that you balance on a salt shaker. You take out some eye drops and have the spectator hold the bottle upside down. Whenever they want, they squeeze the bottle. The moment they do and the eye drop hits the table, the plastic eyeball also falls off the salt shaker.
Ok, those are just a few ideas that I came up with sitting in front of my computer writing this. I did have an idea Googly Eye Trick that I wrote about in the past as well. The point is that we need to push past standard things. YES, there are reasons to do standards, but the more we try to get away from them, the more we break the stereotype of “all magicians are the same”.
