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E-Rase by Julien Arlandis Reviewed

One transparent "white board," one marker, one gimmick, $65 bucks and a DVD. Is it gem or is it rubble? Stay tuned to find out.

Effect

The effects is supposed to be that you draw some shapes on one side of clear piece of plexi-glass. Then you magically cause the shapes to penetrate the plexi-glass and end up on the other side. You prove this by erasing any one (or more) of the shapes named by the spectator right before the magic happens. The fact that they erase "proves" that they are on the side you claim. But a magical gesture later, they can no longer be erased because they're now on the other side of the plastic. Confused?

Method

The method relies on a secret way of erasing the ink from one side of the board when you appear to be erasing it from another side of the board. The method is fishy and unreliable at best. Every demo I've found on the Internet cleverly leaves out a few seconds of footage. It's always the same few seconds . . . the seconds that are so blatantly obvious that you're doing something fishy that where it left in the trailer you'd likely decide not to buy this.

Also, there are parts of the handling where the gimmick is in view of the spectator. Additionally, at the end when the spectator is asked to try (using her finger) to wipe off the ink, it's not unreasonable for her to ask to use the cloth that you had just been using. But, alas, you cannot let her use that cloth because it has a gimmick in it. You could offer her another cloth, but this just adds more suspicion to the cloth. Even though any cloth will work, your refusal to let her use your cloth could lead her to believe that she knows the secret . . . that it's the cloth.

Further, the gimmick supplied is not the same as the one shown in the included DVD. We'll talk more about that in the Product Quality section. In fact, the rest of the problems with the method are all related to product quality, so we'll deal with that momentarily.

Ad Copy Integrity

The ad copy is hard to judge. Basically, in theory everything in the ad copy would be accurate if the product wasn't defective. The claims they make about no manipulation, no chemicals, etc. are all true, but the effect still doesn't work. The tablet is examinable, etc. but the trick still doesn't work. I think when we get to the product quality, things will become clear, so let's move on . . .

Product Quality

First we'll address the supplied DVD. It's French and English. The English version has the Julien Arlandis speaking in French with a translator speaking English. However, the voice-over translator guy can barely be heard on much of the DVD because the volume of Arlandis is overpowering the translator. Further, the translator has a pretty strong French accent from what I could tell. This makes it even harder to understand.

Without exaggerating, I can comfortably say that I understood about 10% of what was being said. It was extremely difficult to watch. Luckily the actions of Arlandis were, for the most part, clear enough to get the gist of what was happening.

Next, the ad copy claims that an eraser is included with the product. It was not. Further, the dry erase marker that came with the set is barely visible on the plexi-glass. The pen was nearly dried out, so I grabbed one of my dry erase markers from my white board. They, too, are barely visible on the plexi-glass, yet they work fine on my white board. Additionally, I could not erase the dry erase ink of my pens with the gimmick or a cloth. I was able to, eventually, scrub off the ink with some heavy elbow grease and a tissue. However, due to the nature of the effects that use this prop, having to scrub that hard does not work for performance. Add the fact that the gimmick wouldn't erase it and you have a useless prop.

On top of all this, the supplied gimmick is much, much, much smaller than the one shown in the DVD. This makes the secret part of the trick extremely difficult. Essentially, you have to be able to create the illusion that you're erasing the front of the board, when you're really erasing the back. However, the super small size of the gimmick makes this illusion totally transparent. Of course this all assumes that the spectator can see what you've written on the plexi-glass, but they can't. It also assumes that you can easily wipe off the ink from the plexi-glass, but you can't. It also assumes that the gimmick can actually erase the ink, but it can't.

Nowhere in the DVD was there any discussion of what kind of ink to use. I assumed that it must be dry erase ink, but as far as I could tell, that was never mentioned. Plus the ad copy did say "no special ink." However, let's assume that dry erase ink is not "special" ink. The next question is what kind of dry erase pen do you use? The one supplied didn't work. It was too light and barely visible. My Expo β€” the most popular dry erase brand β€” didn't work. I tried two different colors. They were barely visible and wouldn't erase easily.

Final Thoughts

Whenever I get a product that is this bad, I try to step back and see if I'm just being a jerk or am I truly being objective. Sometimes, I'll look at other reviews to see if other reviewers saw it the same way I did. In most cases, we're in agreement, so I read two reviews,Β butΒ they were both about 3 stars. I have no idea how that's possible with the product. Often when another reviewer has a different opinion from me, after reading their review I can see how I may have missed this or that and how they made a good point here or there that I may need to reconsider.

However, in this case, I saw nothing of the sort. I cannot, in good conscience, recommend that you spend your hard earned cash on this. I don't do this often, but here it is folks:

Final Verdict:
Zero Stars with a Stone Status of Complete and Utter Rubble

20 Comments

  • Steve Black says:

    Hi Jeff,

    WOW !! This sound’s awful.I tend to think that it would be odd if occasionally you didn’t review a product that was this bad. It just makes me trust your reviews more! Well Done!

    Best Wishes,

    Steve

    • Jeff Stone says:

      @Steve – Thanks. I’ve got plenty of bad ones. It’s just been a while. I was hoping that the quality of stuff out there would continue to increase.

  • Carmelo says:

    I love your honest and very informative reviews. Never apologize for saying too much. Most other reviews are extremely lacking. As far as this product getting better reviews elsewhere, it is probably because they are based in magazines or websites that rely on ad money from magic dealers. I rarely see poor reviews of products anywhere except here and in Magic magazine. (magic message boards excepted)

  • Bob Tobias says:

    Jeff,

    Great review, as always. I don’t mean to kick an already much dead horse but it is also worth mentioning that you need to write the symbols on the board ahead of time. I supposed there is a metod for doing it in front of spectators and that would require additional handling and very careful, symmetrical writing.

    As for erasing the board, maybe give Clorox Disinfecting Wipes a try. That’s a trick my admin assistant uses on white boards and it gets them good as new.

    Thanks for the continued efforts,

    Bob

    • Jeff Stone says:

      @Bob – Thanks for the comment. That’s a good point when it comes to drawings that are not symmetrical. For the shapes that are symmetrical (e.g., ESP Symbols, etc.), it can be done in front of the audience with a little bit of misdirection.

  • Emory Kimbrough says:

    Do not use Clorox Disinfecting Wipes. Use hydrochloric acid. That will completely dissolve the whole damned board, the preferred result in this case.

    • Jeff Stone says:

      @Emory – Thanks for the tip. However, I won’t be using anything to clean it because I won’t be using this piece o’ garbage . . . πŸ™‚

  • rick says:

    bought it, hated it. tried to make it better by using a transparent clipboard from Staples so it would have a reason to be and not look like a cheap prop with the name of the effect printed on one side. I used a 2 inch smiley face sticker on both sides to hide the “secret” which I painted yellow. Even after this total revamping, the problem of not being able to completely erase all the ink from the plastic ruins the board as you mentioned. I tried soap,4O9,naptha, and a lot of elbow grease, nothing worked. I finally decided to cut my losses and scrapped the project. Jeff, your review was spot on, don’t hold back. My only problem with your review is that zero stars was being generous.

    • Jeff Stone says:

      @Rick – Thanks for the feedback brother. I’m sorry you had to waste your cash. I’ve only given 0 Stars maybe once or twice besides this one. I may just have to start doing negative stars. πŸ™‚

  • Martin Lester says:

    Keep up the good work Jeff

    I also like the way you tell it like it is !

    Another give away if a product is junk, is normally when you go to a convention if no one wants to demo it , it’s best to avoid

    This was on show at the last magic live , a friend of mine did purchase it and quickly re sold it before the word got out,

    I guessed how this worked but the other issue is I am sure some spectator might just think that you turned round the board and was erasing the wrong side !

    • Jeff Stone says:

      @Martin – Thanks for the feedback brother. I appreciate it. You’re right about the spectator assumptions. However, you’d never even get that far because the thing is a Piece of Junk.

  • Bob Tobias says:

    Hi Jeff,

    I just started looking at your site on a regular basis and have a few general comments. I couldn’t find any place to post them or a way to send them directly so, here they are. Feel free to remove them from this thread because they do not relate to this specific effect.

    I am a big fan of peer reviews and have even written a few myself. From that experience, I think your goal of one review per day may be a disservice to yourself, your family, and your audience. With magic, it is important to both learn and perform an effect to know how effective it really is. (Yes, know you don’t care about the “effect” and I’ll get to that in a minute.) There’s just not enough time to accomplish that on a daily basis.

    I agree that you should review magic free from your feelings of the type of effect performed. As you said somewhere, just because you don’t care for linking ring routines (you said coin routines but I usually like those) doesn’t mean you shouldn’t review them.

    However, there are two effect-related bits of information that I would like to see in your reviews when possible. The first is based on your familiarity with the trick, from performing it, where you can tell us how close it comes to creating the effect promised. At one review per day that will be difficult without occasionally circling back and updating past reviews.

    The second bit of input is based on your experience with magic in general where you can suggest alternatives to acquire the same skills and create the same effect. You did that recently in your review of the Tommy Wonder 2-cup routine. (You now have me waiting for the next L&L sale to roll around. $10 DVDs and I only bought a handful… What was I thinking?)

    Thanks for your time,

    Bob

    • Jeff Stone says:

      @Bob – Thanks for the post. Leaving here on this thread is fine. It somewhat fits the subject.

      I appreciate your concern about how this impacts my family, but it happens when they’re not around, so that’s not a problem.

      As for testing the effect, there’s just no way to do that. For example, a DVD with 10 effects on it that all require hours and hours of practice. First, I’d need to spend 10 times the amount of time I’m spending now. That really would impact my family. However, on top of that, I’m not going to perform a routine for a live audience until I feel I’ve perfected the timing, the routine, the script, etc.

      I spend sometimes months on an effect before I’ll show it to a real person. It’s simply not practical to do that for the sake of reviews. I’d have to spend way too much time on that. Further, generally speaking, the effect is only as good as the magician. If it’s an effect I don’t like, it’ll come across in my performance. Additionally, I’d have to find new random strangers to do the effects to.

      Finding an audience, learning the effect, testing, etc. could make it such that I only review 4 or 5 products per year. Nobody wants to visit a site that only updates the content a few times a year. Also, most of the time, it’s pretty clear when an effect (due to a poor method) won’t work. As is obviously the case here with E-Rase. I don’t need an audience to know that the gimmick doesn’t even work.

      One the other hand, if the gimmick does work, and it does exactly what it says, my performance for an audience is irrelevant. We know the gimmick works. It’s going to be up to the magician to make it something special for the audience. Just because I can make it work for the audience doesn’t mean that someone else can. Or just because I didn’t get a reaction when performing it, doesn’t mean you won’t.

      The recent review of Tommy Wonder’s routine is a perfect example of this. Because I know how to use create the special cup holder (from the L&L video), I could go out and perform this for lay people and blow them away. Of course, I would need to put in a ton of practice and rehearsal before doing so. But once I’ve spent the weeks/months doing that, let’s say I’ve got the perfect routine and I fry lay person after lay person, and it ends up becoming a staple in my act, maybe even my closer. I still would not recommend that DVD. My performance or non-performance of an effect is irrelevant.

      Take Tommy Wonder’s Vanishing Watch to Nest of Boxes. It would require me to purchase a special table that costs over $1000. Or I could build one, but you need to be an engineer to pull something like that off, and the materials alone would be a few hundred dollars, and that’s just one trick of five on a DVD. What about all the other ones. Tommy Wonder has spent years mastering those effects. There’s no way my few hours practicing and performing would mean anything valuable. Or what might be gained wouldn’t be worth my time.

      Take a book like Annemann’s Practical Mental Effects. Hundreds and hundreds of tricks that I would have to perform . . . or what about Tarbell? I just think it’s totally impractical to perform every effect that I review.

      Sorry for the rant. πŸ™‚

      I really do appreciate your feedback, but it just can’t happen brother. πŸ™‚

      Jeffro

      • Emory Kimbrough says:

        Here’s something that might be both practical and interesting – Just for the small percentage of reviewed items that you do take the the time to master and perform occasionally, come back to us in, say, six months with Review Revisit. Rather than re-hash the original review, let us know why the item became one of the rare “keepers” for you, what you’ve learned from using it for six months, whether you changed your opinion about any points you made in the original review, and what practical technique-and-presentation suggestions you can now offer for others who will join you in using it in the real world.

        • Jeff Stone says:

          @Emory – Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll consider it. However, keep in mind that my review is about the method, ad copy and product quality. None of that really changes when you perform it. If the method doesn’t work, and the gimmick doesn’t work, and the ad copy lied about what the product does, I certainly won’t be testing it in my repertoire. πŸ™‚

  • John says:

    Hey Jeff – As magicians we’ve ALL experienced the dissatisfaction of purchasing a magic effect that was a complete and utter disappointment.

    Your magic reviews are the best I’ve seen. Most (others) are simply product pitches disguised as reviews. I trust your word on a product and if you say it’s rubble – I believe it.

    John

    • Jeff Stone says:

      @John – Thanks brother. I appreciate the feedback. Yeah. It’s a bit annoying when that happens. Luckily, lately, I’ve been getting a good batch of gems. Let’s hope the trend continues.

  • Mark Paulson says:

    One thing you might want to try is wiping it with toilet paper. It seems to be the most appropriate association I can think of.

    Thanks for the review, Jeff!

    -Mark

  • Mike d says:

    I think reviews also tend to focus on bad method more then the actual trick itself.i nvr owned this.way to costly for plastic and a dvd. But something tells me either the gimmick is way to easy to spot or the method is hard to pull off.or if its flipping the board over i can see why its 0 stars. But it looks cool other then what effects can be done besides a few predictions. This was doomed from the start

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