– Intro / Brief Overview
What’s up everybody, welcome to the video, my name is Keith and in today’s video we’re going to be looking at and reviewing Persona by David Jonathan and Vanishing Inc. If you’re into self working packet tricks, then this is definitely for you!
– What Is The Routine/Trick?
What is the routine or trick? This is a fun little packet trick which hides itself as a personality test and comes with some cards and ‘instructions’ for how this test will work. Of course, this is all just a front and really something to use as an opening when performing the trick. You bring out some face down cards and invite your spectator to take part in the personality test and answer a few questions.
You can use the questions on the card that came with this which is on the back to the instructions, or you can ask your own questions. Get some laughs and fun out of it, I’d say and ask them questions which will result in funny answers like “if you could do any job in the world what would you do” and when they tell you, you spell out the answer using the cards moving the top card to the bottom. You can ask as many questions as you like, or as few questions as you like. When you ask your last question and you spell out the answer, you will arrive on one card which you will then place down, or give to the spectator to hold.
Before you reveal which personality trait they have finished on, you firstly show off the other traits which you’re left with and there’s two versions included in the trick too. One is all negative traits such as selfish and lazy and the one they’re left with is a positive one. The other set of cards is a more rude version and is perfect for hecklers or people who you know will have a good sense of humour. The normal version will allow the spectator to feel proud of themselves and the rude version will leave them feeling less proud, but in a funny way.
– How Much Does It Cost?
How much does this trick cost? I got this from Magicbox for £24 and it’s probably about the same price at all other good magic shops too.
– Quick Performance
Before we head on with the review, here’s a quick performance of this, so you can get an idea of how a routine can be done.
– What Do You Get With It?
What do you get with Persona once you buy it? You get a nice presentation box in which you have the link and password to the tutorial which is a 48 minutes and 45 seconds tutorial and has some live performances included in the beginning and then David goes through the tutorial about the magic trick itself, how it works and also other things such as how he uses 5 questions and always has something for the final question and shows you examples of what you could use too.
As stated earlier, in the package too, you receive the personality test fake instructions card and you also get a nice leather wallet which has two slots in either side where you have the two sets of cards, so you can keep them all together and ready to perform whichever version you want to for the correct audience. I’ve been keeping the instructional card in the side which is the more adult side, so I always know which one that is, as that’s more my performing personality.
– Is It Easy To Perform and where can you perform it?
The question is that everyone wants to know, is how easy it is to perform and where can it be performed? Just like this YouTube channel name, this is Magic For Beginners. Anyone can pick this up and perform it pretty much right away and this can be performed anywhere at all and there’s no angles needed to perform it either, it can be performed surrounded. This is something you can keep in a pocket and when some one asks you to show them a trick, this is super easy to perform and can be performed in so many different ways, so you can always change up the performance depending on the person you’re doing the magic to.
These cards are also marked, so this makes it much easier to perform. If you can’t read the markings, you can also use the crib on the instructions card to finish the trick too and all of this is explained in the tutorial.
Before we go on further, I just wanted to have a quick stop in the video to say thank you for watching this far and if you haven’t subscribed to the channel, a subscriber would be awesome and would really help grow the channel, so give that a click and we’ll get on with the video!
– Can You Inspect It?
Can this be inspected? Yes, of course it can be inspected and can be held out for inspection after the trick and the spectator can even perform the trick themselves in their own hands, doing the spelling of the answers with the cards putting the top card to the bottom etc. These cards do have markings, but as a lot of Phill Smith’s marked cards, you can’t see the markings, but once they’re pointed out to you, you’ll always see them.
– Is It Well Made?
Is this trick well made? I think they are. The cards are of decent quality and I believe they’re plastic covered and the leather case it comes with feels fantastic and I think it’ll handle some hammering over time when using it. The tutorial is well made too and has good audio and video quality, which is always great. There’s both talking head segments and top down shots, along with the live performances.
– Positives
Let’s get into positives for the trick and of course, the first for me was that it’s a funny routine and something a little cheeky that you can perform as a serious piece or a funny piece. When Graeme performed this on the MagicBox stand from a recent magic day I attended, he performed the rude version on some one and I thought it was fantastic, so I knew I had to get it. The other positive is that this is super simple to perform and doesn’t take up much pocket space at all, so that’s always a win.
– Negatives
As with all positives, you have to have some negatives and the only negative that I can come up with begrudgingly to be completely honest is that the rude version finale is a card which says asshole, but in the UK we generally say arsehole, so a version which had that spelling would have been amazing, but not something which is a deal breaker. To be fair something like Richard Head would have been a chosen word for me over arsehole, but it’s still funny either way.
I hope you enjoyed the review, if you did then please drop a comment below to let me know what you thought of the performance or the review and if this is something which you’re going to pick up in the future.
I have a bunch of other magic which I’ve been shooting reviews for and been awaiting some performance videos shot to be added in the videos will hopefully be getting finished up and uploaded to the channel and there’s some great tricks coming, so keep an eye out for those. But yeah until next time, see ya!