Random I-Tunes Song of The Moment: Purple Rain by Prince

This is a weird product. For $40.00 you get a handful of gimmicks, and a DVD. These gimmicks are weird, and I've not seen them before. I don't how much they cost, but I suspect they're pretty inexpensive. On the DVD you get a handful of effects you can do with these gimmicks. All of them require you to put your hand in a glass of water as part of the performance. That alone makes them very unlikely to enter my repertoire - it's too tacky for me - but I understand that this may not deter others.

The tacky nature of digging your hand into a glass of water aside, the effects possible with these gimmicks are pretty cool, and I suspect with the right presentation would be solid ideas for the very casual after dinner with friends kind of venue. In that arena, even I might do one or two of them. Additionally, the gimmicks are magical in and of themselves. On the DVD the nature of the gimmick is described, and I had a hard time believing it. I figured it just 'looked that way' because of the lighting on the DVD, but I was wrong. The gimmicks do exactly what they claim.

So here's the deal. If you like the idea of being able to show your hand completely empty, show a glass of water to be completely empty (other than the water) and reach into the water and form a 'ball of water' in your bare hands, then you'll like this product.

'Spidey,' one of the creators/teachers on the DVD has a decent 'justification' of what he's doing. He basically claims that magicians have the ability to manipulate the molecular structure of the water and solidify it. Not bad . . . it has some potential.

Unless those gimmicks are extremely expensive, I think that $40.00 is a bit steep. However, the effect is pretty cool, though a little bit messy with the reaching in and out of water thing. It's not for everyone and does need some justification. When you put all of this together, I'd say, that if you like the concept of the effect, you'll probably feel like you got your money's worth. So I'm kind of middle-of-the-road on this one, thus we'll go with . .

Final Rating:
3 stars and a stone rating of 'Gem-ish'