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Have you ever decided to sell your soul personal data to a Chinese company using child labor in exchange for unbelievably low prices on Temu? Have you ever ordered crappy magic props on Wish.com? Hopped on Alibaba to see if you can trade a few pennies for a gimmick that almost contemplates not sucking?
These sites filled with amazingly cheap Chinese knockoff products are gaining such traction these days that most people you encounter will be familiar with them. Which makes them the perfect excuse to introduce a magic prop in a casual setting while also justifying its unusual properties.
Knockoff Cards
“Take a look at this deck of cards I got off Temu. See anything strange about it?”
“See the logo? That doesn’t say Bicycle. They want you to mistake them for Bicycle cards, but the truth is, they’re absolute crap. Look, they didn’t even print them right.”
From here, you can pull out the deck and go into an all-backs routine, or a printing-the-deck style routine, or force a 3½ of Clubs. If the theme from the outside is “this deck isn’t normal,” absolutely no card gag is off-limits.
Knockoff Lego-Compatible Bricks
Tricks involving Lego-style building bricks almost never come with official Lego stock. Take for example, Iain Bailey’s “Wand O Blocks,” in which a white brick removed from “wand” jumps back onto the end, and then jumps right into the middle of it. When you hand the bricks that come with it out for inspection, anyone could see they lack that Lego trademark on them. So lean into it!
“I found these bricks in an open-air market in Zimbabwe. They were going for only 100 trillion Zimbabwean Dollars.”
“I figured I could buy the box and build a magic wand out of them that I could easily break into parts to store in my pockets. But wouldn’t you know it, the Chinese factory that made them couldn’t get them to go together right. See this block on the bottom? It keeps falling off with just the slightest shake…see it’s all the way over here! It never does what you want! When you try to throw it away, it reattaches itself instead! You never have these issues with real Legos!”
Counterfeit Shoes
“I got these fake Jordans for like ten bucks on Wish. Can you tell? They’re so cheap the laces don’t even work right. Look at this…”
And then go into a performance of Donovan Mount’s “Laced Up.”
Cheap Rubber Bands
“I just got in a box of ten thousand rubber bands I ordered off Alibaba, and I am not happy. I think they don’t know how to vulcanize the latex rubber properly…”
(insert your favorite rubber band penetration tricks here)
“See what I mean? Stuff passes right through them. By the way, unrelatedly, you wouldn’t happen to need a few thousand condoms, would you? Very cheap.”
You may have noticed a byline you haven’t seen before on this article. Hi, I’m Franklin. Somehow, I’ve been roped into contributing to this enterprise as well. I hope this introduction to me gives you a taste of my approach to magic.