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The Effect

The mentalist asks his participaint to shake out a number of orange and lime tic tacs and from them pick 5. Once selected, the mentalist removes a prediction from his pocket that matches the five selected tic tacs.

But that's not all.

The mentalist gets the participant to, out of view, shake out more tic tacs, separating the colours so that all the lime are in one hand and all the orange in the other. The mentalist is then able to determine how many tic tacs in total have been taken, how many of each colour there are, and in which hands.


Cost £7.99 from off of Magic Box


Difficulty
1=easy to do


Review

I have quite a severe dependency on cards, which is bad news because I'm most interested in mentalism. I'm also lacking in experience when it comes to performance. To solve both these problems I've been looking out for fairly short and simple non-card based effects that I can unleash on people while I get my chops.

With all of that in mind, Trick Tac was pretty much a no brainer, an effect that has pretty much no traditional "trick" trappings.

The method is easy and obvious, which is not to its detriment at all. In fact it works so well that I've had people that should know better not spot the method when it's been right there in front of them. It's quite adaptable too. The methods and techniques provided are good to go from opening the package, but are flexible enough to be adapted to other presentations. For instance, the prediction for the first phase is printed, but I prefer to write it out having judged the spectator accordingly.

There are problems, chief of all the fact that the second phase of the effect relies in part on the participant tipping out tic tacs without seeing them. A couple of times in doing this effect I've had people lose a tic tac during this process and if you can't account for it, it makes the ending rather difficult.

Also, I suspect that the method for determining what colour sweet is in each hand might not be for everyone. I certainly don't use it. That said there are other methods out there. I employ a bit of creative scripting and a technique cribbed from Bry Reynolds' Safwan Papers.

I've had decent reactions from this, and mainly, I think, because it's an effect that hinges on a familar and innocent object makes it strong and seemingly impromptu. The issue with mentalism is that you ought to be able to do it with pretty much anything, and so to whip out a box of tic tacs and create a mini mind-reading miracle with them is a good thing to have.

As for resets, you could do it instantly with a bit of brainwork, or take a few seconds and the load off.

Overall

A nice bit of business. I'll give it a 7 overall, because I believe it can be made stronger with a bit of application of other methods.

HOUSE!

Wise-ass!

I didn't really like the first effect at all, a nice enough method but there was just something that I don't like about it. The second effect though I really like! Having a spec tip out some tic tacs and being able to tell them how many of each colour they've got in which hand is a very nice little opening effect. The method is very nice and oh so simple, a case of 'oh why did I never think of that!'. I like it a lot, although the method for knowing which colour is in which hand, as Mr Grue said may not be for everyone. I've come up with my own method which is quite bold and may not hit 100% of the time but when it does, it's impressive and if it doesn't then it doesn't really matter.