Amazing new Magic trick.

Imagine this. The magician comes on the stage and the audience give him the clap.

He shows a large red silk hanky. He throws it away. Amazingly the silk instantly appears back in his hand only now it is yellow and smaller.

$25 + shipping.

Not impressed? Didn't think you would be. There's nothing magicial about that at all is there - and yet Rey Ben has put out that trick with a newspaper...

http://www.hanklee.org/xcart/customer/product.php?productid=7618&cat=&page=1

The Diminishing Newspaper is a great new comedy routine from Argentina's Rey Ben.

Open a full size newspaper sheet, read it, close it and throw it away with your right hand. However, when you look at your left hand, the newspaper is still there, but it’s shrunk to half size! Surprised, you read it anyway, close it and throw it away again. But again, in your left hand is an even smaller newspaper. Repeat the action one more time and again in your left hand is an even smaller newspaper (2x2.5 inches). Try to read it, but it is too small. So, you shake the tiny newspaper and it visually restores to full size, as it was at the beginning!

Great comedy potential; totally visual magic!

Now to be fair - I have not seen this performed, but bearing in mind dealer ads are usually hyped up, the trick probably isn't even as good as it's been described there.

So let's step through it.

Open a big sheet of newspaper, throw it away, it's still in your hand. In other words you throw it away and the audience says 'ohh look another newspaper came out of the big one and its smaller'.

Repeat this a couple of times and realize you're not impressing anyone, so you shake the small paper and it opens out into a big one again and everyone says 'oh he unfolded that'.

If this was being sold as just a bit of comedy business, then I could just about imagine someone performing it and getting laughs, but to add to the end of the dealer copy "totally visual magic!" has to be a total lie.

$35 to look like a donkey seems a bit steep to me.

MW.