Price$25.00
Media TypeTrick
CategoryClose Up, Mentalism
Date AddedDec 21, 2010
Industrial Strength Link
Osterlind, Richard
(Based on 1 review)
This classic routine has been unavailable for over 20 years. Although it was featured on the original Challenge Magic video and Richard's later Mind Mysteries series, very few performers are using it today because the spring necessary for the effect has been unavailable.
But things have changed! We have finally found a spring company who was able to produce the necessary spring in stainless steel that will last a lifetime! We have also produced a brand new book, with new illustrations, that covers all the phases of the incredible routine. This is far more than a simple puzzle. It is an impossible-looking routine that looks magical and leaves them stunned! And, it is one of the most enjoyable feats of magic to perform!
The effect is that the solid steel, industrial-grade spring constantly links and unlinks from a borrowed, metal coat hanger in the most impossible ways. Like the Linking Rings, you can do it and they can't. Over and over again, you link it on the coat hanger in all kinds of ways and take it off just as easily. At the end, you can even leave the linked spring on the hanger!
You - and your audiences - will love this effect!
Comes complete with stainless steel spring and 15 page, black and white illustrated booklet.
Reviews
(Top ▲)
This is another Osterlind product that I’ve had a struggle with trying to review. I’ll focus first on the product itself first, and the routine second.
You are provided with a well-produced booklet and an industrial spring. The spring is heavy metal, ungimmicked, and will last a lifetime. The booklet gives the history, the moves, and the routine. There are several typos and unclear instructions in the booklet, but it’s well produced overall.
The routine itself is a series of puzzles. While the author claims it has gone way beyond the realm of a simple puzzle, I disagree. Adding moves and sequences doesn’t make something magical, it’s the performer and the presentation that lifts something out of the realm of puzzle. A look at the work of Bob Neale will show an almost endless supply of routines that started as mere puzzles, and have now been transformed into pieces of magical theater. This routine doesn’t even come close to any of Neale’s material.
All Osterlind does in the routine is show how he can get the spring off the coat hanger, and the spectator can not get it on or off. Speaking of which, there is no reason, or theatrical hook for using a hanger and a spring. I guess there could be some way someone could come up with, but there are already dozens of puzzles that have connections between their objects, or reasons for their existence.
However, there is one context where Osterlind explains this will definitely work. He created this while playing around in his family’s hardware store, and he’d do this for customers who asked him to show them something. He’d put the spring on the hanger, and hand it to them, so they’d go off to try and figure it out, and leave him alone to do his work. Honestly, this is the only conceivable way I think this routine could make sense.
If you want to see how to really transform a puzzle into something more, and get dozens more interesting puzzles, spend a few extra dollars on one of Bob Neale’s books. Unless you have a real presentation idea for this, or unless you work in a hardware store, don’t bother.
You are provided with a well-produced booklet and an industrial spring. The spring is heavy metal, ungimmicked, and will last a lifetime. The booklet gives the history, the moves, and the routine. There are several typos and unclear instructions in the booklet, but it’s well produced overall.
The routine itself is a series of puzzles. While the author claims it has gone way beyond the realm of a simple puzzle, I disagree. Adding moves and sequences doesn’t make something magical, it’s the performer and the presentation that lifts something out of the realm of puzzle. A look at the work of Bob Neale will show an almost endless supply of routines that started as mere puzzles, and have now been transformed into pieces of magical theater. This routine doesn’t even come close to any of Neale’s material.
All Osterlind does in the routine is show how he can get the spring off the coat hanger, and the spectator can not get it on or off. Speaking of which, there is no reason, or theatrical hook for using a hanger and a spring. I guess there could be some way someone could come up with, but there are already dozens of puzzles that have connections between their objects, or reasons for their existence.
However, there is one context where Osterlind explains this will definitely work. He created this while playing around in his family’s hardware store, and he’d do this for customers who asked him to show them something. He’d put the spring on the hanger, and hand it to them, so they’d go off to try and figure it out, and leave him alone to do his work. Honestly, this is the only conceivable way I think this routine could make sense.
If you want to see how to really transform a puzzle into something more, and get dozens more interesting puzzles, spend a few extra dollars on one of Bob Neale’s books. Unless you have a real presentation idea for this, or unless you work in a hardware store, don’t bother.