Random I-Tunes Song of The Moment: Tim McGraw by Taylor Swift
John Kaplan: Santa Appears Review
One CD-ROM, one PDF, a handful of production illusion plans, $35 bucks and one Santa Appears Review. Is it gem or is it rubble? Stay tuned to find out.
Effect/Method/Ad Copy Integrity
Making someone appear is what this is all about. It can be Santa, the CEO, guest of honor, yourself, etc. You are given the very brief descriptions of 7 different illusions for causing a person to appear. These are all very much stage illusions and will require someone handy with construction. The first six illusions include a video embedded in the PDF document so that you can see a live performance of the illusion.
Then following the video is about a page of brief instructions followed by a handful of photographs which is followed by a basic sketch on grid paper of the dimensions that are kind of quasi-blueprints. There's not much to say about the ad copy. It just tells you what the illusions are. You can get a sense of the venues by watching the video trailer.
Santa Appears Review - Product Quality
The real issue here is the product quality. First of all, it's simply a PDF file on a CD-ROM. This could have easily just been a download. Second, the embedded videos only work if you use Adobe Acrobat Reader. I don't like that software. I prefer Nitro, so it was a little annoying that I had to download software that I don't want.
Next, the video quality is pretty darn grainy. The instructions range from unclear to somewhat clear for the most part. Oddly enough, the seventh/bonus illusion did not have a video, but it was the most clear in the instructions. Some of the illusions, I'm still 100% unclear how they work even after reading the "description" and looking at the pictures and "blueprints." Some of them made sense; others did not. Further, one of the illusions only gives general information and does not give detailed "blueprints" but rather, sends you over to Paul Osbourne's site to spend $27 to figure out how to build the illusion in detail.
Santa Appears Review - Final Thoughts
This one's somewhere in the middle for me. I think that in some cases, it would be helpful to have someone who knows his/her way around the woodshop and blueprints. However, these are not overly detailed blueprints, and I think that even for someone skilled in this area, some of this stuff would be confusing.
If you're looking for a way to make Santa (or anyone) appear in a big stage illusion, you might find what you're looking for here, but if you do, it'll be vague for the most part.
Final Verdict:
2.5 Stars with a Stone Status of grubble.
Available at your favorite magic dealer.
Magic Dealers see Murphy's Magic for details
10 Comments
Kind of stinky, no? And I must agree, why put PDF on a disc……and what a pain to get all of the info, according to your description….and for an effect that would probably be rarely used, with a lot of effort (construction, buying materials, deciphering the “blueprints”, etc). Sounds as if you’d need a special construction team as well, and especially if you don’t have a wood shop (and then have to buy more plans to make it all make sense? I do a lot of woodworking, so I’d love to see the plans, but I wouldn’t waste my money on it for something I would rarely, if ever, use.
So a thorough, honest revue of what seems to be a dud.
Thanks, Jeff!
@Daniel – Thanks for the post brother. Putting aside the delivery method, I’m okay with the concept of selling a blueprint (or blueprints) for illusions for $35 bucks or so. If you’re an illusionist, it’s way cheaper to hire someone to build the illusion for you than it would be to buy something pre-made, so I certainly get the idea. But, in this case, it was such terrible product quality that it was a dud.
An absolute fail for the product. Even if you don’t know the in’s and out’s of carpentry you should still be able to know how the effect works.
It sounds like the plans for illusions that you find in Tarbell’s course. enough to tell you about the effect but nothing on the HOW to build it.
Then it failed by using old forms of passing on information a CD Rom… it might as well have been a floppy disc by the sounds of it.
Yep. There are so many more smart ways to have delivered this product.
I agree why put it on a cd. I buy my stuff to build off of a website and it comes to me in a email. I dont even use wood it is all pvc and fabric. so a lot easier to carry. Thanks for the review. I am always looking for stuff like this but it sounds like I can save 35 dollars!
Yeah . . . I wouldn’t bother with this one.
@Alan – Where do you get your plans for illusions using pvc and fabric?
Hi Steve,
I got the ebook from PVC Pipe Magic. Also if you go to just Magic Nook there is a lot more stuff on there. Hope this helps.
The problems with the CD-ROM form soured me to this product. From I could finally (I shouldn’t have to fight and swear at a product even before I see it) see, the overall project was fine, maybe even 4 stars, but due to the technical difficulties, I’d say 1 star. For gosh sake people should make what they sell at least a little consumer friendly, and certainly not consumer frustrating.
100% agree. Product quality is a huge deal to me, and these days, stuff like this is so easy to make better, and more user-friendly.