talkmagic.co.uk

Name : Prison Box
Price : £20.00 JBTV
Reset : Instant Once the ring is removed at the end of the performance
Time to learn : About 10mins
Examinable : Yes (Before and After)
Difficulty : 1-2
What you get : Very Well gimmicked box, with three nuts and bolts.
Demonstration : http://www.tenyo.co.jp/magic_en/catalog/prison.html

Effect : You show a plastic box with three compartments. Running through each compartment is a bolt. You hand the box out to the spectators for examanation (They can remove the bolts if they wish). You take the box back and place the bolts back through the compartments one by one. Before placing the last bolt in the top compartment you ask to borrow a finger ring from any of the spectators. You thread the last bolt through the top compartment and also thread it through the ring, therefore trapping the Ring. A plastic cover is slid over the box and you are ready to perform.

After some patter you place the box under a cloth, and when you bring it back out the ring has jumped from the top compartment to the bottom. You do this again and make it jump from the botton to the top. The spectator's all say you are just turning the box around so you place it under the cloth again, but this time the ring performs the impossible and jumps to the middle compartment. You remove the cover and hand the box out for examanation and ask the spectator to undo the bolt and remove his or her ring

Comment : This trick has gone down well with the people I have shown it to. Some sites say you can let them take the box home and they will never find the secret. Personally for me this would be a no no. I gave it to my wife for examantion and performed the trick as above. She was very impressed by it and then asked for the box back at the end. After ten minutes of examination she started getting supspicous with some parts of the box (Most spectators won't keep it for this long as you will move onto another trick). For a quick examination (A minute or so) it's a good trick though.

Thanks

Mabs

This looks like it would be good for little kids because kids like little props and trinkets. Most adults would dismiss it as a "deceptive device." In the mind of the spectator, if the "magic" is done for you by some secret device than the magician only gets credit for "having a cool little box," not for being a good magician.