A very long time ago... I was with my friend from Singapore Kyle Ravin. We went on a road trip to Las Vegas, and in addition to pilgrimages to David Copperfile, Mac King and others... of course we went to see PENN AND TELLER.
They did one effect that had a profound effect on me. It was their Phone to Fish routine. A brilliant effect, with brilliant choreography. Effect meets method in a diabolical way.... however.... it was not efficient for those of us who work alone.
I decided to delve deep into my years of magic and invention and come up with a practical version. For over a year... I was going more in the direction of Tommy Wonder.. using very complicated tables and custom boxes and little motors and some remote controls. While this would have all worked; it was overly complicated and beyond my workshop to build alone. Let alone THOUSANDS of dollars per each.
Then I had a creative moment... and a "thing" came to me. I took an old trick that I had as a kid, refined it, changed it a LOT, and made it practical to add to a FedEx box that could be handed out and casually handled by an audience member so the magician can give the box away at the START of the routine. After another year (I've been up to my ears for 6 seasons on a TV show so its slow) and 4-5 prototypes to get a version I could make in a production environment, I finally had something that I could show magic friends to work on a routine and get opinion.
Thanks so much to Dan Sylvester, Chance Wolf, Mike Elizalde, Walt Anthony, Chris Stotz, Cosmo Solano, and several more I boiled the prep, the prop,and the routine down to their most efficient elements and built a story that made sense, but wasn't so restrictive that it HAD to be used.
I made the prop available to only a TINY few people in advance... and universally the reviews were beyond my expectations. I sold a few at a steep discount and refined the routine even more using suggestions by people who had used it in their shows.. sometimes in over a hundred performances in a real world situation in an amusement park, Can't get more "broken in" than that!! (Thanks Ben Zabin!!!)
At any rate..I finally was able to shoot some video for a demo, and an instructional video. My friend Grant Smith edited it all together and I realized that I'd LOST SOME IMPORTANT FOOTAGE!!! To make it worse, I was getting ready to leave for another season of the TV show I worked on and couldn't work on it more for 6 more months.
To make matters worse, I ended up moving my home and workshop from Los Angeles to Atlanta, GA.
At any rate, I finally reshot the demo, and the instructions and got all the pieces together... sold some more preview versions... was universally told that the price was TOO LOW!!! I raised the price some.. but not as high as was suggested by several. and now.. after such a long story, it's here and is available directly through my website at:
ttp://www.wack-o-magic.com/box
or
https://hocus-pocus.com/magicshop/index.cfm?p=56453
Any questions? I'll mostly gladly answer them at info@wack-o-magic.com
