talkmagic.co.uk

You can have a look at the demo and desciption at

http://www.sankeymagic.com/

I am new to sponge magic, so bear it in mind reading the review.

Cost

around $35.

Difficulty
(1=easy to do, 2=No sleights, but not so easy, 3=Some sleights used,
4=Advanced sleights used, 5=Suitable for experienced magicians only)

3

Review

You can consider this DVD as a tutorial on fundumentals of sponge ball magic. Except that it is earplugs (as far as I can tell almost all the moves in the DVD are sponge ball moves). Jay gives quite an elaborate explanation why he started using them instead of sponge balls.

1. They make sense, they are something that people can relate to, while sponge balls are just that, balls made of sponge material. Personally, I don't think it makes that big a difference. But the beginning of a routine when you pretend to have hearing problems and pull an earplug out of your ear is quite amusing.

2. The yellow colour of the earplugs is better than the traditional red of sponge balls. I do not think it's important either, as you can certainly find yellow sponge balls as well.

3. The earplugs aren't round, hence no rolling. This is indeed an advantage. How big an advantage I can't tell, I do not have much experince with sponge balls, but it makes sense.

4. The most important reason, according to me at least, is that some moves are easier done with earplugs. E.g. the retention vanish is certainly simpler with them. I've been practising it with balls for some while, but always been frustrated as I didn't seem to be able to make it deceptive enough. With earplugs everything fell in the right place almost immediately.

Apart from the moves, 4 full routines are described. They can be done with balls, except that producing the earplug from your ear makes more sense than with sponge balls. The moves are explained well, but there's nothing new. These are just standard sponge balls moves, so do not expect any Sankey like original stuff.

There are also 5 bonus tricks:

Lazarus
Re:Cap
Fire at will
Triangulate
Blind date

All are excellent, I was quite happy to find them on the DVD, although I'd already known Lazurus and blind date. Re:Cap is particularly good.

Overall

If you are new to sponge magic and need a good DVD to get you started, then you can probably find better ones. I heard Patrick Page has a very good one. If you are looking for Sankey's original tricks, then it's not the right DVD either, except for the bonus material. But if you like the idea of using earplugs instead of sponge balls, then I would say go for it. It's a nice DVD and Jay is a good teacher.

Overal 7 out of 10. Plus 2 extra points for the bonus tricks. So in total 9 out of 10.