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 don’t know if they are all the same).

You are supplied with a ‘special sharpie’ which makes the trick possible and a well illustrated, though brief single sheet of instructions. There’s no DVD. That’s right – no DVD! How quaint. This makes for a very neat little package – and it all comes in a nice black box.

If you watch the video (and I do encourage you to do so – if only to enjoy the twee music!) it does seem like a very magical effect. The hands are cleanly seen to be empty, and yet the pen changes colour. It is certainly very visual.

What can we say? As the video tells us there is no ‘panel move’ (which I take it means paddle move – perhaps it’s a Canadian thing?) – so the cleverly gaffed Sharpie does a lot of the work. You will have to work a bit at the handling to get it smooth. But it is certainly within the capability of most magicians I think.

As nicely as the prop is made, I’m not convinced of the value of this one. The pen itself is essentially a one trick pony (although saying that, I can think of a second, quite different effect you could use the props for – though I wouldn’t do that in the same set). But the biggest drawback is that you can’t actually write with the pen. Sure – you could swap the pen out to use it – but if your sleight of hand is up to that, I think you could probably manage an almost equally visual colour-changing sharpie effect without a gaff at all!