Here’s a confession – don’t think I had heard of Jeremy Pei before. However, as the introduction to this DVD told me he is 3 times Singapore Magician of the Year. So he clearly knows his onions. The routine is a classic linking ropes routine – 4 loops of rope link and...

As a lover of wine, I was immediately intrigued when I saw this novel bit of mentalism advertised. Sure, the plot has been around a long time, but the idea of using a wine cork as a prop sounded like a good one. In essence this clever trick enables you to tell which...

In the final part of our 2013 hangover series we look at Chris Congreave’s No Diary Diary effect. This essentially does what it says on the tin - or at least it does what is implied on the tin if you're familiar with the idea of the diary trick! In short, a card in...

There seem to be a lot of ‘version 2’s out at the moment and the latest one we’ve looked at is Oddball 2. I can’t quite believe that the original version was first released in 2003 – that makes me feel very old! For those who haven’t seen it before it is a ‘Kurotsuke’...

It feels slightly ironic that we should be reviewing a trick called ‘Just in Time’ so late. But better late than never as they say. This is the first effect we have looked at by Astor. In my mind he is associated with fairly expensive mental items, so this card trick...

In our third part of ‘the ones that got away in 2013’ we review Spoken by Rus Andrews. In our famous (OK – not really that famous – but bear with me anyway) one sentence summary, the effect looks like this: the spectator thinks of any card, mentally makes a few...

So the New Year has started, and we’re all excited about what 2014 will being. But for the MagicDirect review team we thought it was actually a good chance to catch up on a couple of the stand out items from last year which we didn’t quite get round to… First up is...

So it's that time of year again when mothers and fathers up and down the country or maybe even the world are on the search for the perfect Magic Sets for Kids, that they can give to their little budding magicians for Christmas or Birthday.  Well don't panic! We know a...

Magicians love wallets.  Almost as much as we like boxes.  And we especially love wallets that come in nice boxes.  There seem to an endless supply of wallets released on the magic world with many claims to be the ultimate – the final word – etc. etc.  Today we have a...

In the last few years there seems to have been an explosion of interest in the area of ‘ metal bending’ and so I feel very late on the scene with this field.  The reason I finally caved was the clear strength of such an effect.  Bending a borrowed coin is so very...

I saw a small advert for Banner Magic on a magic website and was immediately intrigued. It seems to have entered the magic world without the bang and the flash so often associated with the marketing of new magic and so I was curious to have a look and see what it is...

When is a chop cup not a chop cup?  When it’s a dice-shaker…  Cubism is Dave Forrest’s rather elegant solution to a problem he perceived.  He loved the idea of the chop cup but struggled with the fact that it was so obviously a magic ‘prop’.  I share Dave’s thinking...

Tiny Plunger by Jon Armstrong So I have been using the Tiny Plunger Magic Trick goes as follows, the spectator selects a card, it gets shuffled back into the pack. The magician shows, what looks like a tiny sink plunger and plunges it down onto the face down deck....

So, I just got this nice little set in. In the range are coins, cards and a stainless Steel card guard. As you all know I like a bit of coin magic so let's start there shall we? A dollar size and a half dollar size coin which has the Mechanics insignia emblazoned all...

When is a card trick not a card trick? When it’s actually a magic square. I need to declare my hand and reveal that I am a bit of a maths fan (did you hear my last bit of credibility leaving the building?), but I’d been intrigued by The Grid since it was first...

There must be something in the air because this is the second recent trick we've seen with a Sharpie. The effect of The Sharpen is simple - this is a colour-changing sharpie effect. With minimal moves a sharpie changes colour frmo black, to green to red (in my set - I...