Hello Michael , I have 4 of your very close videos , and have had a lot of fun with the material. Especially the "ooh-ahh Bird. Great magic! I've never used "You Hue" per se , but by putting my "character" name & number on the 4 of the cards it's given me a magical way of producing it if asked. All the best Alan

The key points of You Hue are the apparent free choice of a pen color and the use of the spectator's first name. Without those factors, you are basically doing Shigeo Takagi's Wild Card Routine, which was the inspiration of You Hue.

I did You Hue as part of my 1998 lecture, and I'm sure that some of you who witnessed it can attest to what a fooler it is. The big problem is that it is very difficult to find the proper type of pens. Some have suggested Rose Art pens to me, but the pouch the pens are packaged in is too pliable to be gaffed properly. The best pens I have found recently are manufactured by Rubber Stampede and are sold at the Michael's craft stores. Unfortunately, they are very expensive (about $6 per set). However, if you can find them, and several of your magic buddies want to go in with you, you can make up a great set of pens. Incidentally, with the advent of scanners and color printers, you don't need a color Xerox to make up the gaff. You also have greater control of the color settings.

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That Michael , was why I did not use the routine , I could not locate the pens required. (at least in Canada). But I did profit by watching the method and putting it to use another way. Regards ,Alan

Michael, First let me say I am a big fan...but when I saw your 1998 lecture I thought You Hue had a few flaws. First the patter you used seemed to offer a technological explaination for the "magic" that was happening. I don't recall it exactly (as I too suffer from middle age mnemonopause), but it was something to the effect that the cards were made of a high tech duplication paper or something. I think this undermines your effort to get them to ascribe magical powers to what they are witnessing.
The other flaw was the fact that the names should be mirror images if they were being duplicated as the patter decribes, but they are correct images.
Anyway, I still love the pen set gimmick idea.
Thanks a 1E6 for all your great magic.

To Mr. Toast:

You and I may have had this conversation before. I don't remember, but I thought the term I used was "magical Xerox paper." The fact that the name is duplicated properly, and _not_ in mirror image is what makes the thing a magic trick.

Anyway, all I can tell you is that when I was doing the trick all the time it really hurt people.

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It occurs to me that with the advent of the tiny Sharpie Mini's in various colors you could use any standard small change-bag style device to have someone grab a color at random.

Or, if you are bold just put a bunch of different caps on one color and hide the colors in your fist (keeping a lose cap of the "correct" color lose with them to hand to the spectator after he pulls one out of you hand.

Just a thought...

Michael,
You are probably right. I really just wanted an excuse to make a post. You are the man.

The thing I liked about the You Hue gaff was that it looked exactly like what it was supposed to be: a clear plastic pouch with pens in it. It really bums me out that they don't make cheap pens that can be used for that trick.

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