– Intro / Brief Overview
What’s up everybody, welcome to Magic For Beginners my name is Keith and in today’s video we’re going to be donning our chequered shirts and pulling out Mind Box from Craig Petty for a magic review. I believe this trick is up for pre-sale on Penguin Magic now due for release March 1st 2024, but I got this from Craig at Blackpool this year, so thank you again for Craig for it, it’s much appreciated. I’ve been using this for about a week now and love it so much, it’s fantastic for both kids and adults alike to perform for. So let’s dive straight into the video and talk about Mind Blox.
– What Is The Routine/Trick?
So what is Mind Blox? Here’s a brief rundown taken from the Penguin description of the trick. This is created as a sort of challenge card type set of cards and give off a bit of a Top Trumps feel, as there’s a section for the lego set, a description of the set how many blocks is in the set and the difficulty of that set too, but of course from a magician point of view thee’s so much more built into the deck than meets the eye. One of the main tricks which is being pushed for this is that you put one card away in an envelope as a prediction and then you get a spectator to select a card and from that selected card you can reveal a bunch of information such as a thought of word, the total number of bricks in the set and much more. You can then you can get the spectator to select another card (Or use the previously selected one if you thought ahead) and blow their minds using the envelope and the prediction as it’ll match exactly, even though it was selected right from the beginning.
The deck is fully marked and hides in plain sight and once you know where the markings are, they bounce out at you as soon as you look at the back of the card. This was of course designed by Phill Smith who had worked previously on the DMC decks of cards and their marking systems. They’re bright and colourful and thanks to the box they doesn’t look like any sort of magic cards, but more like kids trivia or challenge cards.
– How Much Does It Cost?
So how much does it cost? At the moment, it’s for sale on Penguin for forty dollars which is about thirty one pounds and fifty pence for a UK equivalent, but when it’s released to UK magic shops, I’m not sure how much it’ll cost on those. I’m guessing about the same price. Which seems to be a pretty standard Craig Petty and Penguin price, as Chop, the quantum deck and Lucky Lotto are all forty dollars on there.
– What Do You Get With It?
So what do you get with it? You get this lovely presentation box and inside of there you get a card box which has all of the cards inside there. The box of cards has a few gaff cards to be used for routines and one of the main gaff cards can be seen in the live performances as the big reveal. Then the deck has 26 cards that’s a fantastic use for a prediction method and also used in a bunch of other routines and the other 26 can be used for a large number of other routines too.
The cards have a number of different markings which include basics like what the lego set is, it has a mother of all book tests marking and they can also be used in a specific stack if you wanted to aswell. On the front of the cards, you get a large image showing which lego set the card in and underneath the image, there’s some text which tells you a description of the particular set. At the top of the card, there’s a section which says how many blocks is in each set and the difficulty for each set. The blocks can also be used as a number force too.
The tutorial for the deck is quite short for a Craig Petty release if I’m honest (just kidding) it runs for about 2 hours and 24 minutes in total and there’s a bunch of live performances, discussions on what you get with the trick and 10 routines. After playing with the deck for a while I’m sure you can come up with your own routines and uses for the deck too, with their being that many things built into it. The tutorial is well shot and sounds great too.
– Is It Easy To Perform and where can you perform it?
The question is, is it easy to perform? The answer is yes! Once you know where the markings are and how to read them, you’ll not be able to un-see them which makes the deck super easy to work with. After that, you can follow Craig’s performances and routines and copy those and you’re good to go, or you can just delve into the deck and have a mess around and come up with some routines for yourself, such as the drawing version that I did as a live performance where the spectator can freely choose a card after shuffling and you can then draw the card which they stopped on. Of course, some may be a bit more difficult to draw, but you could always change this up and actually force a card onto the spectator so you can have an easier drawing, but the sky is the limit on what you can do.
– Can You Inspect It?
Can the deck be inspected? Yes, it can. Unless you know where the markings are, then you’ll not know about them and when performing you’re not going to draw attention to the backs so people aren’t going to know or assume as it’s a marked deck, as when it comes to the general public they don’t know that some decks can be marked, especially something like these lego challenge cards which don’t look like something a magician would use.
– Is It Well Made?
Is it well made? I’d say that it is. The box itself is made of thick cardboard and seems to fell a bit thicker than a regular deck of cards which seems to be a bonus for durability as it should last longer than your standard deck of cards. The cards are printed on good quality card stock too, I’m not sure if it’s UPSCC as they do seem to spread well and shuffle well and can even do some decent faro shuffles too and they seem to be decent quality so should hold up over time too when using them.
– Positives
What are the positives? As this is a marked deck, you can use this for so many different things and as they’re not playing cards, it’s nice to have something different in your magic collection to perform for people who either don’t like card tricks, or even for children who don’t understand playing cards, because believe it or not, this is actually the case. Lego is a pretty global toy that most people, if not all should know about so there’s a universal thing about the deck which most people should understand. Again as stated previously too, there’s 10 routines on the tutorial such as predictions, one ahead principles and much more, but as there’s a number of things built into the deck, you can use the deck to do whatever your mind can come up with.
– Negatives
Let’s talk about negatives… Firstly the tutorial was only two hours rather than the usual 7 hours from Craig… Just kidding. For me I have a negative with the marking system, but I’m not sure it’s just me or a general thing. But I find that when the cards are quite close to me it’s hard to see the markings, but when they’re far away they’ve very obvious to me. Not sure if it’s down to my specific eye sight or the fact of the markings being ‘hidden’ in plain view that due to the nature, you need to read them from further away. But I suppose having the card further away from a spectators point of views makes it even less likely to be markings, as you wouldn’t be able to see them, if they suspected such a thing.
So while that negative isn’t really a negative overall as it’s easy to get around it, I felt the need to mention it as if some other people are struggling to read the markings, that might be a resolving issue, just move the cards further away and you should be able to see the markings super easy.
That’s MindBlox from Craig Petty and by the time this video is released, people’s purchases from Penguin should be being shipped out and of course those who bought the trick at Blackpool would already know about this and would have hopefully watched the tutorial and was performing this in the real world.
I did pick up Evoke and Cube52 at Blackpool too, so I’ll be getting some reviews shot for those soon too. I have some prior knowledge of Cube52 as I shot the tutorials with Craig for the project and filmed some of the live performances too, so I’ve seen this used in the real world, so I can’t wait to perform some stuff with the deck too and shoot a review and of course, evoke is a great new release and hearing people talk about it and seeing Matt perform it in real life, it is a trick which is going to be amazing in the real world I think, as it’s a very emotive trick when performed in that way and makes some fantastic mentalism effects.
Again, thanks for this who have watched this until the end of the video, it’s much appreciated. Thanks again to everyone for the support on the channel and until next time, see ya!until next time, see ya!
