"Personal FX" by Wayne Dobson
Suggested Retail USD$25.00
Available from your favorite dealer
In a Blink: 8 Out of 10

"Personal FX", an effect by Wayne Dobson, is a piece that either plays huge with its cleanliness or plays big with its less-clean incarnation but, regardless, it plays and engages and gets the reactions a more guaranteed routine would be proud to claim.

In "Personal FX", a small leather wallet is shown to contain three business cards. These cards are laid in a row on the table, face-up. The spectator is asked to put their phone on any of the cards, then keys on either of the remaining cards, and finally the one card left over is put back in the wallet. The spectator -- not the performer -- now flips over the business cards. On the back are written the words "Phone", "Keys" and "Wallet", and each of the spectator's freely placed items are on the matching card.

Yes, that's the exact description of "Personal FX". It's that clean, that open, and that direct...

Most of the time.

Yep, it's one of Those.

Hold it. Don't hurry off now. "Personal FX" isn't as bad as some of Those can get. In fact, even its lesser working is still good stuff. I can't go into details because, honestly, that would give everything away pretty quickly. I'll just say that there are a couple of additional steps made during the selection process which usually come across as a bit weird but in "Personal FX" just seem like the way things are done and with no importance placed on them. In other words, the routining is as good as it gets for this type of effect. And, to be honest, about 80% of the time you're going to get the super-clean, ultra-direct situation anyway.

But it's the routining that made me like this one so much I couldn't stop performing it. Everything seems so above-board, yes, but it's also made to engage and built to entertain. That it packs so small and is so flexible was just the icing on the cake (yes, I said "flexible"; there's a wide range of objects you can use here, not just the ones already mentioned, if you think about stuff people usually carry on them).

So, with "Personal FX" we've got a great routine that is pretty much everything we'd look for in a good mental magic effect, with a great prop, a very practical working, and, yes, even a good way of giving away a business card. What's not to like about this one?

Personally, I can't think of a thing really. "Personal FX" isn't meant to make reputations and start religions, and it won't, but it will have more than a few people wondering exactly what just happened and for some business cards, a marker, and a wallet, that's not bad at all.

This is one I recommend to anyone looking for a good, well-routined piece of mental magic.

"Personal FX" by Wayne Dobson
In a Blink: 8 Out of 10

Practicality: 9
You'll need a table or other surface, but that's about the only requirement here. I'd hesitate on trying to repeat it in a strolling situation, though. But the set-up is simple, the reset instant, and the work easily managed.

Workmanship: 10
The leather wallet is extremely well made and should last a long time.

Documentation: 5
The documentation, supplied on DVD, is nicely done and will have you going with this fairly quickly.

Effect: 7
When this plays right, it plays big. When it goes a little astray, it still plays very well. For a quick piece of seemingly impromptu mental magic, that's not all bad.

Presentation: 8
This really wins when the best-case scenario hits (which it does frequently) as it's as clean and direct as you could ask for. The rest of the time it becomes less clean, a little more involved, but still is enough to get some pretty strong reactions.

Shane

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