Random I-Tunes Song of The Moment: La Isla Bonita by Madonna

Rebox Review

One gimmick, One DVD, $30 bucks and one Rebox Review. Is it gem or is it rubble? Stay tuned to find out.

Rebox Review: Effect

Pull the cards out of the box, and the box vanishes. Show the deck on both sides, and in the blink of an eye, the box appears around the deck.

Rebox Review: Method

This relies on a gimmick and some basic card handling. The angles a little bit sensitive. It's best for people directly in front of you. If they're on your sides, they may get a glimpse of what's going on. Also, the gimmick itself when not in card box form is a bit obvious. It's easy to hide when you change from boxed to unboxed. However, if you're about to go from unboxed to boxed, you have to be much, much more careful.

Rebox Review: Ad Copy Integrity

The ad copy has some issues for sure. If you watch the ad trailer, you'll notice that it's very poor quality and that the camera moves quite fast. You never get a moment to see the deck long enough to see it happen. The camera moves too quickly to see a real performance of it. Further, there's one moment in the trailer where he flips a boxed deck of cards into the air. That cannot be done with this effect. The appearing box is not a full box that can be handled freely like that.

Next, the claim that the gimmick can stay in your deck and then at any time you can perform Rebox is just not true. There are some effects that can be done with the gimmick staying on the bottom of the deck. If it's in the middle of the deck, you cannot, practically, use the deck. If it's on the bottom, you are limited to what you can do with the deck. He mentions ambitious card as an option and shows a brief handling on the training DVD. That is one case where it's doable. However, they claim that it can stay in your deck throughout your routines and be used any time. That's just not true.

Rebox Review - Magic Reviewed

Rebox Review: Product Quality

As per the usual we've got three parts to the product quality, gimmick(s), video and the teaching.

Gimmick

The gimmick supplied is pretty good quality. It works as it's supposed to. It'll last quite a while, and is relatively easy to rebuild when it wears out. There's an Easter egg on the DVD that shows you how to construct the gimmick.

DVD Production/Teaching

The production value was pretty bad. The lighting and audio during the performances were both not great. The teaching segments were all done with over-the-shoulder shots and very small pixelated text on the screen with a music track overlay. The effect and method are simple enough that you can still learn what you need even with the poor quality text. However, in the gimmick construction part of the DVD, the text is very much necessary, and it's very difficult to read.

Normally, I don't nit-pick typos too much, especially when it doesn't impact the learning. However . . . on the gimmick construction section the text mentions something about taping two parts of the gimmick together to " . . . keep them aline." I can only assume that they meant to say " . . . keep them aligned." I point this out because it shows that lack of attention to detail. As far as I know, "aline" is not a real word, and even if it were, I'm assuming they would have needed to use "alined" in this case. It goes beyond a spelling error. It's a conceptual error. It reminds me of times I've seen people spell the word "believe" as "be leave." That's not a typo folks. It's a conceptual error.

There are a small things here and there like "aline" that were simply overlooked and could have been caught if more quality control effort were taken.

Rebox Review: Final Thoughts

The gimmick, for the most part, cannot stay in the deck without making the handling of the deck extremely restrictive. The deck is not fully boxed when the box appears on the deck, therefore when the box appears, you have to be very careful with your angles, so careful that I'd personally be afraid to use it. As for the star rating stuff, the ad copy is misleading in more than on place; the production quality is low, and the method only works in restricted conditions that are not addressed anywhere on the DVD.

At a price tag of $30 I would expect a bit more attention to detail and a lot more ad copy integrity.

Final Verdict:
2.5 Stars with a Stone Status of grubble. More gem than rubble, but still grubble.

Available at your Favorite Magic Dealer. Dealer's see Murphy's Magic for details.

8 Comments

  • Bob says:

    Great candid and informative review. The high-speed- camera- movement- so -you- can’t -see- what’s -happening method of trailers is an issue that you get with a lot of magic products in my view, exploiting the online sales in a way that didn’t and couldn’t happen with bricknmortar shops. But then maybe I just gotta move with the times.

    • Jeff Stone says:

      @Bob – Amen brother. I miss the good ol’ days of hangin’ at Winkler’s Warehouse of Wonders all day on a Saturday. It’s a shame that most shops have gone the way of the dinosaur.

  • Stephen Peters says:

    Long live Run-D.M.C.! Your cold openings are the best.

    • Jeff Stone says:

      @Stephen – Thanks! I’m glad you got the reference. As for my cold openings . . . It’s much like The Saga from Stone Cold Magic Magazine. It’s an exercise as a creator. It keeps me on my toes. And . . . YES . . . Long Live Run D.M.C. indeed!

  • Emory Kimbrough says:

    Parent to obstreperous child: BEHAVE!

    Protesting child: I AM being have!

  • Emory Kimbrough says:

    My message was a response to your complaint about people believing that “believe” is “be leave.” A kid similarly thought that “behave” was “be have.” (Pronounced with a long “a” in the “have” – Thus the child concluded that the present participle of behave would be “being have.”)

    My aunt used to process appeals of denied unemployment-compensation benefits. The tedium of the job was frequently relieved by correspondence containing some really… ah… _inventive_ modifications of standard English. The all-time favorite was someone who closed a letter by stating that, if some problem could be resolved, then “I would please shake it.”

    Please shake it.

    That took a few moments for the office to decipher:

    “Please shake it” = “appreciate it”

    While we’re at it, before your health hiatus, the Magicreviewed.com web site would always be have. But since your welcome return, I be leave that there is one issue where the site is not being have – Videos now autoplay. Autoplay is an objective evil – on the level of DVDs with no Play All button – particularly annoying when the visitor just wants to read the written review in peace. I would please shake it if you turned off the autoplay.

    • Jeff Stone says:

      @Emory – OOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! My head is gonna asplode. Sorry about the auto play. It drives up the number of video views which increases my ad revenue which makes it so that Jeff gets a teeny, tiny bit o’ compensation for all of his hard work.

      I’ve considered removing it, or offering a “turn off auto play” button on the page. We’ll see. I’m not sure yet.

      Jeffro

Your email address will not be published.

 

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.