This is my review of Prohibition by Black's Magic. Prohibition is being sold by various magic dealers, but I will post here the link to Penguin's site, since they are sponsors of GoMagicGo.
http://www.penguinmagic.com/product.php?ID=1592Prohibition is a cap through bottle rountine, and a dern good one at that. First, though, I want to address the hype. Here is Penguin's ad copy:
You borrow a normal beer or soda bottle from someone—anybody—at a bar, restaurant, party, or whatever. You grab a couple caps off the bar and give them to the participants to examine; one that will end up inside the bottle and one to cap the bottle with to keep the bottle secured. You hold the bottle in your hand, snap the cap on the bottom once, twice, and bang! It is inside. As simple as that!
You immediately hand the bottle back to the person you were working with to be examined; you are totally and unequivocally clean. Believe it. It is that quick. Lighting fast. Prohibition can be done totally impromptu, completely surrounded, and it is totally visual! Seriously, watch the demo and see if you can catch it; they sure won't. They'll just sit there and look at you with their mouths wide open—totally "gob smacked" as the Scots say.Okay, so here's my problem with the hype. First, it does not mention that if you borrow the bottle from someone at the bar, you will at some point before performing the penetration need to crush a cap so that it fits into the bottle and
actually place it into the bottle. Before performing, they will see the cap come out of the bottle, but this may be an important consideration for some and should have been mentioned.
Second, and more important: this is
NOT "totally impromptu." Some people might walk around every day with IT taped to their ear and thus consider the floating dollar bill an impromptu effect ("It can be done with anyone's dollar! Any time!"). But is clearly not "totally impromptu." This effect has the same type of limitation (it does not involve IT), in that you will need to be equipped with something no layperson is likely to have on them. I would easily characterize this as a "prepared impromptu" effect in that it
appears to be impromptu to your spectators. But that is not the same thing as "totally impromptu," which might be an important limitation. Also, you don't end "totally and unequivocably clean," though there are ways suggested on the DVD to clean up, and I don't see this a significant problem considering the circumstances in which you are likely to be performing this.
Now that that is out of the way, let me say: I love this effect. It just looks great and, though definitely requiring some practice, is well within the abilities of just about anyone. Most people should be able to perform Prohibition consistently after an hour or two of work.
What your audience will see in the basic routine is this: You walk up and ask for an empty beer bottle. You crush the cap, place it inside the bottle, and give it to a spectator to examine. You then pull out an uncrushed bottle cap and give that to the spectator to examine. You take back the bottle and pour out the crushed cap into your hand. You then take back the uncrushed cap and screw or place it onto the top of the bottle so that it is closed. Next, you take the crushed cap and smack it against the bottom of the bottle three times. On the third hit, the cap disappears from your hand and appears inside the bottle. You may then hand the bottle to the spectator for examination. And did I mention that it looks fantastic?
At just over twenty dollars, this effect is worth the price if you do magic in restaurants and bars. The DVD is well produced and includes live performances so you can see examples of timing and misdirection. Much of the impact does come from the apparent impromptu nature of the trick, however, so this probably wouldn't be something you would want to put into your formal show. Nevertheless, if the limitations outlined above don't trouble you, I would highly recommend Prohibition.
